


Sharing a Home

by scullywolf



Series: Growing a Home [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:29:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I am incredibly thankful for my awesome beta, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/crazygirlne">crazygirlne</a>, without whom this story would undoubtedly still be languishing on my hard drive, barely started and full of misplaced commas. ;)</p><p>ETA: This fic has technically not been abandoned, but the muse has been hardcore focused elsewhere for the past, erm, goodly while. I do have every intention of finishing this eventually. It just...might be another goodly while. Sorry about that. :\</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Wednesday Morning

**Author's Note:**

> I am incredibly thankful for my awesome beta, [crazygirlne](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crazygirlne), without whom this story would undoubtedly still be languishing on my hard drive, barely started and full of misplaced commas. ;)
> 
> ETA: This fic has technically not been abandoned, but the muse has been hardcore focused elsewhere for the past, erm, goodly while. I do have every intention of finishing this eventually. It just...might be another goodly while. Sorry about that. :\

He woke up disoriented the first morning in Pete's World. That was unusual item number one. There was a lack of balance inside his chest, and his brain felt fuzzy, static dancing across his time sense. He considered for a moment that he might be captive and drugged, but that's when he registered unusual item number two: he was in a bed, and he was not alone. Not only was he not alone, but he was thoroughly and mutually entwined with the person beside him. The blonde female person beside him. The blonde female person whose fingers were drawing lazy lines back and forth across the lower part of his ribs.

Full awareness arrived in a rush as _Rose Tyler_ sighed into his neck and began slowly grinding against his hip.

What?

What?!

He lay there, frozen. Right, yes. Stars going out, reality bomb, instantaneous biological metacrisis, Bad Wolf Bay, “I could spend it with you, if you want,” Rose, _Rose_. Who was currently doing her level best to molest him despite still being completely asleep. He thought. Was pretty sure, anyway.

“Uh, Rose?” he murmured. He tried to turn his head to look at her, but her face was still buried in his neck. She began placing soft, open-mouthed kisses under his jaw line, working her way up toward his ear while her pelvis continued its leisurely rocking against his hip. Blood immediately rushed to his groin, and he sucked in a breath. It wasn't that he wanted her to stop, exactly, but he worried she might not take it well if she woke up after things had progressed much further. She licked his earlobe, and he bit back a moan, clearing his throat instead.

“Ah, erm, it isn't that I'm not enjoying this,” he said, a bit louder than before. “And you must be having one hell of a nice dream, so I'm really very sorry to wake you. But if you'd like to wake up and continue this, I would be more than willing to – guh – Rose!” He squeaked when the fingers caressing his ribs traveled up and lightly pinched his nipple through his shirt.

Rose came awake with a start. She gasped and pushed herself back away from him, flailing a bit to disentangle her legs from his. 

“Oh my god. I'm so sorry! I didn't...I mean, I wasn't...you're here. You're really here.”

“I'm really here,” he said, smiling. “Nice dream?”

Rose's cheeks turned bright red, and she brought her hands up to cover her face.

“I’m so sorry. I've never...that's never happened before. To me. Oh my god, I am so embarrassed.”

He laughed. “It's okay! Honestly, Rose, it's all right. I am neither offended nor bothered by what is a perfectly normal human reaction to hormones and subconscious mental stimuli. You don't need to be embarrassed. Come here?”

He opened his arms, and she sheepishly curled herself back into his embrace, still hiding her face from his. He smoothed his hands across her back.

“Besides,” he continued, “I think you'd find, if you were inclined to investigate, that I am more than adequately responsive to your attentions, unintentional though they may have been.” His cock twitched under the covers to corroborate his claim. “And while I am perfectly content to wait until you are mentally and emotionally ready to resume all aspects of physical intimacy with me, you needn't feel compelled to hesitate or hold back on my account. I understand if the whole metacrisis thing is still too weird for you, though. It's a lot to process, I know. I leave it entirely up to you, no pressure either way.”

Rose looked up at him. “Could we just maybe, erm, pretend the last three minutes didn't happen and start the morning over?”

“If you want. Sure, we can do that. Although it's really been more like four and a half minutes...”

She groaned, and he laughed again. “Sorry, sorry. Yes. Starting over.” He ran the back of his hand down her upper arm and smiled at her. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” she said, giving him a small smile in return. “Did you, er, sleep all right?”

“I did, actually. And for so long! Well, relatively speaking, of course. I suppose seven hours and thirty-eight minutes isn't all that much for the average human. Certainly you slept longer than that on quite a few occasions, in my experience. So much sleeping! How are we ever supposed to get anything done?”

“Oi, we get plenty done,” she said, swatting his arm playfully. “In fact, it’s a lot harder to get stuff done if we don’t sleep enough. I expect you'll learn all about it first-hand before too long.”

“You might be right,” he said, considering. “I'll probably need to collect some empirical data, though. Just to be thorough, of course.”

“Right, sure. Well, don't come cryin' to me when you've kept yourself up all night and can barely function the next day. I've been there, done that, know how that song ends.”

“But it will be new and different for me! I've never been...well, okay, it's been a long time since I was sleep deprived to the point of impairment. And that was after I stayed awake for a fortnight.”

Rose laughed. “Well you're not going to be pulling that one off again, I guarantee it. You'd keel over after two or three days of no sleep.”

“Well we shall just have to wait and see. Would you be willing to place a wager on this bold claim of yours?”

“I might be,” she grinned at him, relieved that their banter was helping to alleviate her embarrassment from earlier. “I've got a tenner says you can't go more than three days before falling flat on your face.”

“Done!” he beamed. “Of course, I don't exactly have any money of my own just yet...”

“Oh, so what else is new?” Rose rolled her eyes, though she did it in good spirits.

They lay there a moment, just grinning at each other. Rose's eyes flicked briefly to the Doctor's mouth, and his hand traveled down to squeeze her hip. She _had_ been having a good dream – a frequently recurring one at that – in which she was straddling the Doctor on the jump seat in the TARDIS console room. So many times over the past few years she'd awoken from the same dream, aroused and frustrated and sad as she realized yet again that she was trapped a world away from him. But now? Against all odds, he was there in the bed beside her. She had missed him so much. And though it hit her yet again with a pang that the fully Time Lord Doctor was still alone on the other side of the Void, she knew that the man with her now had missed her just as terribly. He looked at her with the same slightly awestruck adoration she was sure was plastered all over her own face, the kind of look you get when you can't believe the person you've been longing for is finally right there in front of you. 

She took a short breath in, tilted her chin upward, and closed the small remaining distance between them to press her mouth gently to his. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she captured his bottom lip between both of hers, tentatively running the tip of her tongue along it. He traced her top lip with his own tongue, deepening the kiss when she opened her mouth to admit him. Hands wandered and arousal flared, and the Doctor moaned into Rose's mouth when she lightly raked her fingernails up his thigh and firmly cupped his erection. He rolled over to pin her beneath him, bracketing her arms with his and nudging her knees apart to settle his legs between hers while he nipped and sucked his way down her neck. 

Rose groaned, first with pleasure as his hard length pressed against her center, and then with chagrin as she realized just how full her bladder was.

“Erm, Doctor?”

“Mmm?” as he continued his attentions to her neck.

“'M sorry to have to ahhh-ask you, but could you let me up for just a minute? I really need the loo.”

He huffed a laugh into her shoulder and rolled off of her without comment.

“I'm not running away or having second thoughts,” she blurted as she stood up, wanting to be sure he didn't get the wrong idea. “I'm coming right back, and this?” She pointed between herself and him. “This is happening.”

“It's fine,” he said, laughing. “But I'm glad you're coming back. I was going to have to request an immediate shower if you'd changed your mind. These human hormones are...really quite something.”

“Well, that won't be necessary,” she said with a tongue-touched grin, then turned and trotted into the en suite.

* * *

The door closed and the Doctor took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing, single heart. That he could no longer consciously control his body’s physiological responses was still going to take some getting used to. He wasn’t _nervous_ exactly...well, maybe a little bit. He wanted to be sure he could live up to her memories of him. Outwardly, physically, he was virtually identical to his Time Lord self. No surprises there. He just hoped he would still have the moves, as it were.

The hormones racing unrestrained through his system were causing memories to spring unbidden to his mind, scenes flashing by in rapid succession. Rose beneath him on his bed in the TARDIS, back arched and eyes closed. Rose interrupting his tinkering by padding into the console room wearing slippers and one of his Oxfords and nothing else. Rose’s mouth on him in the library, in the galley, pressed up against a wall in the corridor. His mouth on her in the shower, in the media room, under a starry sky on a deserted world a thousand light years from Earth.

He used to have to shove these memories (and more) behind a locked door in his mind. They would have driven him mad (well, madder than he was already) back when he believed that ever seeing Rose again was an impossibility. Now? Now they had the rest of their lives together. He could afford to indulge in a little reminiscence. He felt himself grow harder as he remembered their first time together, a hug of comfort becoming a confession of want, becoming a crumbling of restraint, becoming a meeting of lips and a discarding of clothes and a joining of bodies and minds.

He shifted and briefly pressed the heel of his hand against the ache between his legs, a nearly inaudible moan escaping his mouth. It had been years since he’d let himself succumb to the thoughts and memories and feelings that populated the 'Rose Tyler' section of his mind. And now that he could, he wasn’t sure how to stop. The unfamiliar chemicals in his system were overriding his usual means of control. He wasn’t sure he was capable of willing away an erection anymore; certainly he was completely unable to consciously prevent one in the first place. That was not to suggest, of course, that he would put any pressure on Rose to do anything she wasn’t ready for. He was still prepared to give her all of the time and any of the boundaries she needed in order to feel comfortable with him after what they’d both gone through. It was just that he fervently hoped she was as ready as he was to pick up where they’d left off; he really had not been kidding about needing a shower if she decided she wasn’t ready after all.

* * *

Rose finished washing her hands and stood, palms flat on the counter. She’d walked into this room ready to shag him, but now that she’d had a few minutes to collect herself, she wondered whether they were maybe moving too fast. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, life had thrown her a curveball she could never in a million years have anticipated. Thinking about the beach and the dematerializing TARDIS hit her square in the gut even now, even with the Doctor waiting in her bed, and her vision swam until she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. 

She’d had a plan. They were going to figure out why the stars were going out. They were going to solve the problem and save the day. If they survived, they were going to go back to the TARDIS hand in hand and spend the next week shagging each other rotten. Maybe the next fortnight. And she was going to live the rest of her life at his side. She was never supposed to see this parallel world again. Not her family, not this flat, none of it. It was continuing to throw her, the fact that she was still here.

 _But he’s here, too_.

She raised her head to stare determinedly into the mirror. Right, then. New plan. Rather, similar plan, new setting. She hadn’t spent the last three years wanting him only to hold him at a distance now that she finally had him back. She let herself contemplate all the things she’d planned to do with him. So she couldn’t snog him against the console or straddle him on the jump seat. It didn’t really matter. She didn’t want him any less, even if her heart still hurt for the version of him who had left her behind.

Standing up straight, Rose squared her shoulders and looked appraisingly at her reflection. She was leaner than he would remember, her well-toned arms and shoulders visible outside her vest top, her breasts a bit less full than they used to be, but not by a lot. She reckoned she looked pretty damned good actually, with her Torchwood agent physique. Outside of a medical capacity, it had been a very long time since anyone had seen her naked, and she felt a little thrill at the knowledge that the Doctor was about to. She turned and opened the door.

She re-entered the room to find the Doctor sitting up, his back resting against the headboard, one hand not-so-subtly reappearing from beneath the duvet. He met her eyes, and she shivered as the undisguised want in his darkened gaze sent a rush of heat between her legs. Emboldened, Rose crossed her arms at her waist, grasping her vest at the hem and pulling it off in one fluid motion. The Doctor's jaw fell slack as his attention detoured to her chest and lingered there. _Seems he still likes them just fine, then_. She couldn’t help smirking just a little as she watched him watch her saunter back to the foot of the bed. His eyes flicked back up to her face, and she grinned coyly at him, tongue peeking out from between her teeth. Now it was his turn to shiver.

“You miss me?”

He nodded and swallowed hard. “You know I did. I can’t even begin to tell you how much.”

“No, I…” she cut herself off with a short, huffed laugh. “I meant just now.”

She gestured behind herself to the en suite, and he ducked his head with a slightly abashed grin. His smile broadened as he met her eyes once more.

“Oh. Well, yes. Then, too.”

Rose beamed back at him and began crawling up the bed until she was straddling his lap atop the duvet, hands resting lightly on his shoulders. He brought his own hands to her waist and sat forward to nuzzle her breasts, humming contentedly. She let her head fall back, sighing when he took one nipple into his mouth and flicked his tongue across it. He released it and kissed his way across to the other one, sucking a bit harder to make her gasp. Unexpectedly overcome by the need to touch as much of his skin as possible, Rose slid her hands down his back, gripping the t-shirt and tugging until he growled against her breast and sat back to remove it. She helped him pull the shirt clear of his head and tossed it over her shoulder, giving herself a moment to gawk at him as he’d done to her. His wiry chest bore a faint flush, and he leaned into her touch when she brought her fingers up to trace along his collar bones and down his sternum. Growing more bold, she ran the flats of her hands over his chest and down his sides, eliciting a pleased murmur. The murmur became a chuckle as she continued to stare unabashedly.

“Still meet with your approval then, do I?”

Cheeky bastard. She responded by grinding against his lap and pressing her lips to his neck, trailing a slow line of open-mouthed kisses up to his jaw and behind his ear until he moaned. The sound, combined with the salt of his skin against her tongue, gave her a sudden strong urge to put her mouth elsewhere on him. She traced the shell of his ear with her tongue and then pulled away. 

He whimpered at the loss and gave her a slightly bewildered look when she pushed herself up and off his lap.

She crawled her way backward down his legs a bit, keeping her eyes fixed on his, watching his dawning realization as she pulled the duvet back and hooked her fingers into the waistband of his jogging bottoms (hers, actually, loaned because he couldn't very well wear suit trousers to bed). He raised his hips to help her, and she tugged the bottoms down and off his legs, grinning at the sight revealed to her. She brought her mouth close to his cock, close enough for him to feel the breath ghosting across it, but not yet touching him. 

“I've missed this so much,” she told him, watching him squirm with anticipation.

“I think I can guarantee you I've missed it more,” he countered, eyes slipping shut as she slowly enveloped him with her mouth.

She wrapped one hand around the base of his erection, stroking as she savored the feel of him against her tongue. She had barely begun to move when his thighs began quivering and he cried out.

“Ah! Stop!” 

She quickly pulled her mouth off of him and looked up, concerned.

“Er, so, slight spanner in the works.” He drew a shaky breath. “Blimey, that was _brilliant_. But, erm, I seem to have no ability to control this new part-human body of mine, and if you keep doing that, this is going to be over very, very quickly.”

Rose laughed, relieved. “Oh if that's all. Thought I was hurting you or something.”

“Not even a little,” he assured her. “I just don't seem to have all of the...well... _any_ of the neural pathways I used to rely on before to control my...well, you know.”

“Going to have to learn to control yourself just like any other normal human bloke now,” she teased. “Though I certainly don't mind helping you practice.”

“I am going to hold you to that,” he said. “But in the meantime, why don't we swap places? There's something else I've been missing terribly.”

“Don't need to ask me twice,” she said with a grin.

Rose crawled up the bed and shimmied out of her own pyjama shorts. The Doctor settled himself between her legs, kissing his way up the inside of her left thigh and pausing, as she had, just as he reached the place where she was already slick with want for him. He locked eyes with her before parting her folds with his tongue. Her head lolled back, eyes closed, as he took several slow but firm swipes, licking from bottom to top, nearing but never quite touching the sensitive bud that strained toward him. She moaned as he drove his tongue into her, replacing it with one finger and then another while his mouth danced around her clit. He continued to stroke and tease until she was properly writhing, breath coming in gasps and hips bucking erratically.

“Doctor, please,” she groaned, and he pressed his mouth firmly exactly where she wanted it, tongue flicking back and forth as he sucked.

Her back arched and her mouth opened in a strangled cry as she came, her inner muscles clenching around his fingers. The Doctor, meanwhile, found the sight so gloriously arousing he nearly followed her over the edge himself, but he managed to hold himself together as his fingers slowed and he brought her gently down from her orgasm. She took a few panting breaths and then opened her eyes to look at him hungrily.

“Anything else you've missed?” she nearly growled.

“Oh yes.”

He crawled up to position himself over her once more, hesitating only briefly to brush an errant lock of hair from her face before sinking slowly into her heat. They both moaned at the pleasure of finally being joined again, completely. He captured her mouth with his own, and Rose tasted herself on his tongue. He started to move, pressure already built to a nearly critical point for them both, but she could see the strain in his brow as he fought hard against his release, determined to make things last at least a little bit longer. He began to set a steady rhythm, both with his hips and with his mouth, thrusting deeply into her while muttering a near-constant stream of words against her lips, her neck, her chest.

"Missed you, missed you, _fuck_ Rose, love you, feel so bloody good, can't believe you found me, never thought, never hoped, wished so hard though, couldn't help myself, still can't believe it, never leaving, never letting you go, need you forever..."

He had always been a bit of a talker before, but never so blatantly emotional (though she supposed she couldn't be sure, since he often went on in a language the TARDIS wouldn't translate for her). His words, the openness of his declarations, only served to add fuel to her own desire for him. She snogged him into momentary silence and took the opportunity to get a few words in while he caught his breath.

"I missed you too. So much. So...ungh, god that's good. Fuck, yes, keep doing that."

The Doctor had surprised her by pulling out and stroking his cock up against the outside of her, rubbing his length against her clit instead of penetrating her. She bit down on his shoulder, though not hard, her accompanying cry muffled against his skin. He alternated for several strokes, inside of her and out, inside and out, until she was nearly out of her mind, writhing and gasping.

Rose was almost too far gone for conscious thought, but she focused enough to bring her attention back to the Doctor. Just as he began to breathe more deeply and erratically, moments away from release, she reached up and pressed her fingers against his temple. He instinctively mirrored the action – he had to be the one touching her in order to make the telepathic connection, but touching him first was a fairly reliable way to prompt him – and she was hit by a tsunami of his arousal and love. She knew he could feel the same intensity of emotions from her, and he shouted out above her, eclipsing her own gasping moan as they came together.

He collapsed on her, panting. “I am so sorry that didn't last longer.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his shoulder, giving herself a moment to control her breathing before responding. “Sorry, did I give the impression I didn’t enjoy myself?”

“Well, no,” he conceded with a grin. “But reunion-after-separation-across-dimensions sex seems like it should be somewhat grander and more, I don't know, appropriately elaborate. I've got a whole list of things I wanted to do with you. I couldn't even last, what was that, seven minutes?”

“Dunno. I’m not the one with a perfect mental timer.” She squeezed him where he was still resting inside of her, and he flinched. “Besides, I think you're wrong. I reckon reunion-after-separation-across-dimensions sex is supposed to be all frenzied and intense. We've had years of buildup, yeah? The next round, now _that_ we can take slowly and tick items off of lists or whatever.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Probably ought to refuel first, though. Have some breakfast, take a shower. What do you say?”

“Rose Tyler, you really do always have the very best ideas.”


	2. Wednesday Afternoon

They rapidly discovered that, short of half a bag of stale crisps and a few cans of soup, there really was not much in the way of food in Rose's flat. Most of it had been cleared out and thrown away during the last few weeks of the Dimension Cannon project, primarily because she hardly spent any time at home but also because she operated under the fervent hope that each jump might be the one that allowed her to stay in the other universe permanently. Rather than go out for food all unshowered and disheveled, Rose and the Doctor made do with tinned soup as a temporary fix, intending to go shopping for more food after a shower.

Intentions have a funny way of dissolving, sometimes.

Several hours later, sated and curled around each other in bed, Rose and the Doctor dozed lightly. Any awkwardness Rose initially felt about the idea of getting naked with her new-new-new Doctor had been well vanquished by actual naked interaction. He loved her in the same way he always had, and his body was familiar to her, if somewhat oddly warm in comparison to his Time Lord self. 

True to his word, they had taken the time to explore each other and do all of the things in all of the ways that they'd both missed so much. It lasted longer the second time, longer still the third, and by the end of it all they were both a little bit raw. Raw but satisfied, basking in the comforting warmth of just being together.

“Hmmf, love you,” Rose murmured sleepily against the skin of his shoulder. 

He rolled over and wrapped her in a hug. “Mmm, and so well, too.”

She smirked, poking him in the ribs. “Not bad for being woefully out of practice, yeah?”

“Indeed. If I didn't know better, I'd have suspected you'd spent the whole of our time apart practicing.”

Her laugh was a bit rueful. “Well, I dunno, does solo practice count? Because I might have done a bit of that. We mere humans don't have magical control over our libidos, as you're discovering.”

He pressed a kiss to the side of her head. “Truth be told, I didn't always have perfect control over mine, either. Especially on the rare occasions I would let myself sleep and dream about you. Once I woke up, well, there wasn't really much else for it. I mean, I was certainly physically capable of shutting down the physiological response, but I seemed to have a much more difficult time remembering why I _should_. And that was true before Krop Tor as well, by the way.”

“So Time Lords do wank! I always wondered. Have been kicking myself for years over the fact that I never asked you when I had the chance. Ha!” 

“Weeeeeell, I can't speak for all Time Lords. Certainly they tried to train those sorts of primitive urges out of us at the Academy.” He chuckled. “But I was never exactly a model student. That's not to say I didn't have any control over my body's reflexive reactions to arousing stimuli. Compared to a human, I had remarkable restraint most of the time. Just...not all of the time. And rather less of it after I started traveling with you.”

“God, how much time did _we_ waste?”

“Oi! I wouldn't say that was wasted time. Think of what adventures we might have missed out on if we'd spent all our time shagging in the TARDIS!”

She laughed at him. “Time machine, remember? Adventures could have waited.”

“I suppose you have a point,” he admitted. “Really though, I honestly wasn’t ready until...well, until I was. Nine hundred years of guilt and conditioning is not easy to undo, even in the face of your rather considerable charms.”

“Well. You got there eventually.” She kissed him. “And I'm glad you did.”

“Oh blimey, so am I.”

The Doctor's stomach growled loudly, causing Rose to giggle.

“Are you kidding me with this?” he griped. “Honestly. Is this how it's going to be for the rest of my life? Barest bit of exertion and I'm hungry again?”

“Give yourself some more credit, Doctor. I'd say that was more than the barest bit of exertion. Especially that second go-round.”

He preened a little at that. “Well, yes, that was a rather impressive effort on my part, I must agree. Still. I'm tired. It's lovely here in your bed. I don't want to get up and go out for food.”

“Gotta live like the rest of us, now. It's not so bad. Come on, there's a chippy just down the block. Up we go. You'll perk up once you've had something to eat.”

She sat up, tugging playfully on his arm.

“Oi, this is rich, coming from you, queen of the kip!" He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her back down, rolling them neatly so he could rest his head on her chest with a sigh. "Suddenly I've got a much deeper understanding of your perspective on these matters.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Suddenly?”

“In the cosmic sense, Rose.” He grew quieter, his joking falling aside for a moment as he traced circles on her ribcage. “I've been part-human for less than 48 hours. I'm still getting used to all of it. Yes, I know I was tired yesterday and admitted a whole, what was it, twenty-two and a half hours ago that you were justified in your insistence on so much sleep, but it is all still really rather sudden for me. So much is different now.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Hey, we're in this together, you and me. I can only imagine what you must be going through, changing your species and all. But you're still you, and I'm still me. And maybe we've both changed some since the last time we were properly together, but that's all right. We haven't changed in the ways that really matter. How we feel about each other, that's still the same. And as long as we're there for one other, the rest of it is just the details.”

He nodded against her chest and held her even closer.

“Do you have any idea how much I have missed you and your remarkable ability to say the exact right thing at the exact right moment?” he asked, his voice muffled.

She stroked his back. “Can't be more than I’ve missed you.”

“I don't know about that.”

He raised himself up on to his elbows and looked at her, letting his eyes roam all over the face he never expected to see again. It wasn't just that she was beautiful (because she certainly was that), but that she also embodied home and comfort and safety in a way that really only the TARDIS had ever done before. He had definitely gone a bit mad for a while after he'd lost her; poor Martha got a terribly raw deal, traveling with him when she did. She'd said it had been worth it, but...

“You're staring.”

He blinked, then shrugged, grinning.

“Just still can't believe I've really got you back, is all. And! I've got the added bonus of getting to live the one adventure I never expected. I mean, short of fob-watching myself again...”

“Hold on, short of whatting yourself?”

“Temporarily turned myself human in order to hide from the Family of Blood,” he said. At her puzzled expression, he sat up and explained further. “I had this device on the TARDIS called a chameleon arch. Took my Time Lord self and compressed it into a fob watch, then rewrote my DNA to physically change my body into a human. One heart, only five senses, the whole bit. Because the Family, see, they were part of a race of gaseous creatures that could kill and then inhabit other beings...”

“...like the Gelth?”

“Not precisely, but very similar, actually. Well remembered! Anyway, if they'd caught me, they'd have had access to regeneration and basically unlimited lives, plus the TARDIS. Couldn't let that happen. So I had the TARDIS write a backstory for me and insert us somewhere Martha and I could hide for a few months until the Family died out or moved on.”

Rose's brow was furrowed.

“So, you could just turn yourself human any old time you liked?”

“Technically yes, but when I woke up from the transformation, I had no memory of who I'd been. I woke up thinking I'd lived my entire life as John Smith, school teacher from Nottingham. Bits of my real life would come out in dreams when I slept, but I just played them off as the fantasies of a terrifically overactive imagination. Poor Martha, though. She was there through the whole thing. We landed in 1918, and I took a job at a boys' school. Martha was stuck working as a scullery maid there in order to keep an eye on me, keep me from doing anything stupid, which turned out to be a close-run thing. Anyway. I was human, yes, but I wasn't me.”

“But that's just because you were trying to hide, and the TARDIS wrote you that backstory,” Rose pressed. “What if she'd written your own life into your head?” 

“I...” he floundered, a bit at a loss for words. “I guess I never really considered it.” 

He paused, then closed his eyes and heaved a large sigh. He'd made a promise to himself to be more open and honest with Rose. It went against centuries of habit and reflex, as it had generally been his wont to run away from anything that might leave him emotionally vulnerable. With Rose, that had usually meant ducking questions and changing the subject when they got too close to topics that made him have to think too hard about the future or how brief his time with her would be. Now though, circumstances had changed significantly. They would only have this one life together, he and Rose, and it was a gift he refused to squander. He would not hold her at a distance out of fear.

“No, that's not true," he continued, opening his eyes but keeping them trained on his hands, which rested in his lap. "I did think about it. Briefly. Once. After the Krillitane. A human brain could not have successfully held the entirety of my past and knowledge, as Donna..." He swallowed hard and cleared his throat before continuing. "Anyway. So it would have had to have been an abridged version of my life. The bare minimum of facts and information needed to essentially remember who I was. But I'd have been rubbish at traveling the universe without the ability to see timelines." He dared a glance at her face, and she put her hand on his knee, nodding for him to continue. "And anyway, you wouldn't have wanted to just settle down somewhere on Earth with me and live out the rest of our days. You were barely, what, twenty? Twenty-one? No, I needed to stay a Time Lord. So I made my decision, and then I had the TARDIS lock the chameleon arch away from me somewhere in order to remove the temptation. I just..." he faltered, picking up her hand with both of his and squeezing gently. "I couldn't do it, but there is no question that I was sorely tempted and that the temptation would have only grown the longer we stayed together.”

She pulled his hands to her lips and brushed a soft kiss over his knuckles. “I'm sorry. You're absolutely right. And if you had spelled it all out to me back then, I'd have told you not to do it anyway. Doesn't mean I'm not glad it all sort of worked out that way in the end. Plus you've got the added bonus of getting to keep your big old brilliant alien brain, this way.”

“This is a vastly superior scenario, no question. Everything I ever wanted, with only a fraction of the guilt and none of the crippling memory loss.”

He was interrupted by another rumble from his stomach; he groaned.

“That's it! Fine. To the chippy! But can we stop somewhere on the way back and pick up some provisions so we won't have to leave this flat again for at least another day? Possibly two?”

Rose couldn't answer until she was well out of the throes of giggles. “Come on, then. Clothes first. Find those trousers you borrowed from Dad, and I'll get you a belt. Oh, and fetch your own suit trousers as well. The coat’s probably fine, didn’t get all sandy like they did. We can drop them by the cleaner's while we're out. Mind you, clear out those transdimensional pockets of yours first.”

The Doctor chuckled. "Suppose it wouldn't do for a chunk of 41st century biotungsten to fall out of my trousers the moment they’re turned upside down. Right. Let’s get moving.”

* * *

Walking hand in hand back from their outing, carrying a sackful of groceries and a gallon of milk, respectively, the Doctor and Rose kept stealing glances at each other. For her part, Rose continued to be amazed about having the Doctor in Pete's World with her. She'd walked down this street countless times, missing him, wishing he were there beside her, and now he was. And for his part, the Doctor kept remembering the way it felt to see her in that abandoned street, the way his hearts stopped beating when Donna said, “Why don't you ask her yourself?”

Back inside the flat, groceries put away, he scooped Rose up in a hug and twirled her around while she laughed delightedly. He set her down with a kiss, and she glanced over at the clock on the wall.

“Blimey, it's nearly three. I should probably sit down and write up my account of what happened between my last Cannon jump and getting back to Norway. I promised I'd take care of that today. You could, erm, watch telly or something, if you want. Or I've got loads of books. Or you could have a kip and rest up for round four.” The last suggestion was followed up by an appearance of her tongue between her teeth.

He made to grab her tongue with his lips, and she shied away, giggling.

“I should practice tuning my time sense, actually,” he said. “The static is starting to give me a wee bit of a headache. I'll just, ah, sofa?”

“Mmm, help yourself. I was going to sit at the table. Shouldn't take too long. You know where everything is now, if you need anything.”

They parted with one last kiss, and the Doctor walked over to recline on the sofa while Rose went to fetch her laptop from the bedroom. When she returned, he was stretched out as much as his long frame would allow, legs dangling over the arm rest, eyes closed, fingertips on his own temples. She gave herself a moment to stare without reservation, heaved a happy sigh, then sat down to get to work.

It was more emotional than she expected, rehashing and recording the events leading up to Norway. Between returning from her exhausting trip to Donna's parallel world and finally jumping into the prime universe at the right time and roughly the right place, barely 16 hours had passed for her in linear time. She'd had just enough time to debrief and get some sleep and a shower in the Torchwood on-call suite. From there, it had been jumping with the big gun, finding out about the Daleks, trying to locate the Doctor...

She thought about finally – FINALLY – seeing him in the street. The look on his face, even from all the way down the block. Running as fast as she could manage with the enormous weapon thumping against her side with every step. The shock of watching him get shot by the Dalek. The panic and horror at remembering him incapacitated by regeneration before, never mind the completely selfish but completely human desire to see him again as he'd been before they got separated. With the really great hair and the unstoppable gob and his gorgeous face and _knowing_ that he loved her. She was terrified he would regenerate into someone who maybe wouldn't like blondes or something ridiculous like that. His personality had changed in a lot of ways from her leather jacketed Doctor to her pinstriped one, so she knew there were no guarantees with regeneration. She couldn't bear the thought of him going back to the sort of man who possessed the restraint and discipline to continue holding her at a distance. She had fought so hard to get back to him that she needed him to still be _him_ , at least initially. 

Her heart rate increased involuntarily as she remembered that panic, felt it all over again, and though she hadn't known it at that time, when he'd bent over and diverted the excess regeneration energy into the vessel containing his disembodied hand, she had been watching the creation of the man who was currently reclined in her living room. She was a jumble of mixed emotions and stopped typing for several minutes, trying to pull herself back together. She closed her eyes, holding her head in her hands and taking deep breaths. 

“Rose?”

She opened her eyes again and turned her head to find the Doctor watching her over the back of the sofa.

“I'm fine, just, ah, got to the part where you got shot by the Dalek and then you started to regenerate and...and I...”

She couldn't continue. He stood and crossed the room quickly to crouch beside her chair, putting his arms around her as she crumpled forward. 

“Hey, I'm here. Only got one heart, but it's all yours and I'm here.”

She sniffled into his shoulder. “Thanks. God, I was so worried, when it started. I mean, obviously we couldn't afford to have you stuck in a healing coma for two days again, not with Daleks in the streets. But also I...I didn't know if you would still want me, afterward, if you changed.”

“Oh Rose.” He held her tighter. “It would be impossible for any version of me to not want you. I know I changed a lot when I regenerated after the Gamestation, but that's just... What was it you said earlier? Just the details. Loving you was never going to be anything but a certainty.”

She nodded against him.

“Mind you, I didn't want to change, either. Took every scrap of remaining strength to keep the energy from going all the way. I just wanted to be the Doctor you remembered, the one you'd fought so hard to get back to. Little did I realize I'd set the stage to give you something entirely unexpected. And, obviously, that's the last thing I remember before waking up starkers in a burning TARDIS with a panic-stricken Donna Noble.”

Somehow that realization hadn't struck Rose before now. She sat back to look him in the face. “Oh! I didn't...I mean, of course you wouldn't have...those awful things Davros said to...well, other you...and Jack! Oh my god, when they shot Jack I couldn't...I didn't know he was...that I'd...”

“Do you want to take a break from all this?” he asked gently, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear and caressing her cheek. “It's never easy having to mentally relive traumatic events.”

She shook her head. “Nah, I'd rather get it done so I don't have to think about any of it for a while. It's just part of the job. Someday I'll let you read through my Cannon jump reports. I mean, if you want. They're not exactly light reading, as far as the subject matter is concerned. Parallel dimensions are...I guess I just had no idea how awful some of the alternatives could be.”

He nodded, gravely. “There are thousands of billions of outcomes, different decisions splitting off into different realities. Statistically, the number of 'wrong' choices end up being much greater, especially in situations where there are many bad options for a given circumstance and only one good one. The number of dystopian dimensions out there...it's a little horrifying to think about, actually.”

“More than a little horrifying to experience, some of them,” she agreed. “I was really surprised, though. Never ran into another you. I mean, you were dead in Donna's parallel world, and the TARDIS was there, but I never found you alive anywhere.”

“Yeah, funny thing about Time Lords. Well, all of Gallifrey, really. There was really only ever the one version of the planet, the one in the prime universe. No parallels. So Time Lords could travel to other dimensions, yes, but there would never be other versions of us already there. When circumstances caused another dimension to split off, we would cease to exist in the new reality.”

Her brow furrowed. “But that doesn't even make sense. If you existed up to that point, then you did things that effected change throughout history. If you split off and stop existing, the whole of history would be different. And I should have been able to go backward in that dimension's timeline and find you. But I tried that several times, and it never worked.”

“Ah, well wasn't that clever of you! I appreciate the way you've thought that out. But no, it's a quirk of the process. The universe compensates. Everything that happened up to the point of the split still 'happened,’ but not literally. It's like...okay, think of it like a video game. You play along until you reach a checkpoint, yeah? If you shut the game off and come back later, you start again at the checkpoint. That's the new beginning.”

“Hold on, though. If that's true, then you shouldn't have turned up dead under the Thames in Donna's parallel world. Because that whole timeline split off when she turned the car, which happened a full six months before the thing with the Racnoss. You shouldn't have existed at all in the new timeline, but you were obviously there. I saw your body. I used your dying TARDIS to build a time machine in order to send Donna back. I even...before we realized Donna was the key...I was afraid of triggering the Reapers because you'd been confirmed dead, and I almost didn't do it. But I was so desperate. So I tried going back in that timeline to get to you, under the Thames. I could never find you, though. Tried four times, and it was like you were in a different part of the tunnel system every time I went back. There but completely inaccessible to me. They made me stop trying once we figured out we needed to focus on Donna instead.”

He rubbed the back of his head. “That...that whole thing confounded me too, to be perfectly honest. The beetle on Donna's back was one of the Trickster's Brigade. It shouldn't have had the power to spawn a true parallel world at all, let alone such an anomalous one. I suspect that, unlike an actual alternate dimension, which just continues on forever, that one blinked out of existence the moment Donna went back and convinced her earlier self to turn left.”

“Well, not the very moment, because I was still there. I did get pulled back prematurely, though. We thought it was the Cannon malfunctioning, but that would actually make sense if the dimension was collapsing.” Rose rubbed her eyes. “The whole thing makes me go a bit cross-eyed. Never mind that I was seriously sleep deprived for most of that entire ordeal. Honestly, until last night, I hadn't had a decent night's sleep in weeks.”

“And yet you still managed to save the world. All of the worlds.” He looked at her with pride. “Rose Tyler, you really are quite amazing.”

She snorted. “I dunno about amazing. Stubborn, I'll grant. Just did what needed doing. Wasn't going to stop until I found you.”

“Well, as much as I suppose the world-saving is _technically_ the most important thing, I'm glad you did. Find me, that is.”

She wrapped her arms around him again, and he kissed the side of her head.

“Me too,” she agreed, then sighed. “All right. I should get back to this. How's your head?”

“Still a bit muddled, but I think I'm making progress. Just going to take practice is all.”

“Well go on, then. Practice away. I need to mentally spend some time on the Dalek Crucible now. Hooray.”

“I'll be over there if you need me.” He stood, gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze, and returned to the sofa.

Closing his eyes and bringing his fingers to his temples once more, the Doctor found the place within his mind where his time sense resided. Ordinarily he could clearly pick out timelines, follow them backward into the past or identify possible futures. Now, though, it was as though he was looking at a jumble of them with terrible eyesight and no glasses. They were fuzzy, indistinct, and trying to focus on any one of them at a time gave him a headache. He could sense relative time just fine (two minutes and thirty-seven seconds had passed since he'd last been in physical contact with Rose Tyler), but his ability to access “all that is, was, or ever could be” was seriously hampered by the slight frequency difference between this universe's Vortex and the one in his original universe.

He focused on bringing himself into tune, as it were. When he concentrated, he could force himself to see the timelines as individual strands, rather than an indiscrete, blurry clump, but only for a few seconds at a time. With repeated attempts, he was beginning to be able to stretch that out longer and longer. He practiced grabbing lines at random and tracing them backward, learning more about the history of this universe. He was so absorbed in his efforts that he didn't immediately register Rose's voice.

“Sorry, what was that?” he asked, shaking himself back to awareness.

“Oh, god, no _I'm_ sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your practicing. Sort of just started talking without thinking. Don't mind me.”

“No, it's all right. What did you say?”

“I was wondering about the gun thing you were holding, when you first came running out of the TARDIS. What was that?”

“Oh! Feedback enhancement device. Meant to fold the Daleks' energy weapons back on themselves. Would've worked a treat if I'd been able to get close enough to use it. Not exactly a long-range weapon, regretably. Running out like a loony perhaps wasn't the best choice, there, but there weren't a lot of other options at the time.”

“Was that something you had on the TARDIS somewhere?” she asked.

“Well, I had all the parts for it,” he explained. “Only took a few minutes to put together, though. Weeeeell, more like seven, eight minutes. Still, not bad, freshly generated, partly human, under pressure, all of that. Then again, I am quite brilliant.”

“Never doubted it,” she said, wryly. “Okay, so it was a feedback...multiplier?”

“Feedback enhancement device.”

“Ta. Getting there. Should have this write-up done soon.”

He retreated back into his mind, and already it was getting easier to bring the strands into focus quickly and keep them there longer. He continued exploring the histories of different planets, cataloging differences between this universe and their original one where he found them. He learned, for example, that Woman Wept froze a full 200 years later in this universe, and that Skaro was not, had never been and never would be a planet of Daleks. He made a mental note to explore that interesting tidbit further when he was a little less tired.

Deciding he'd had enough for the time being, he opened his eyes and sat up. It had grown dark outside, though Rose didn’t seem to have noticed any more than he had. She didn’t react when he turned on the lamp beside the sofa. Rose was typing still, but she was surreptitiously sniffling also, pausing every now and again to wipe the back of her hand across her eyes. He watched her, suspecting he knew the reason for her tears. Suspecting he was the reason, at least in some way. He spared a thought then for the Time Lord, pitying him the misfortune of finding Rose again only to lose her a matter of hours later. Losing her to himself would be only the barest bit of comfort. It wasn't fair. And it could so easily have gone the other way. Rose could have stayed on the TARDIS with the other Doctor, and he could have been kicked out to live the rest of his days alone on Earth somewhere. Born into a world where Rose had returned, only to watch her swan off with another version of himself. He doubted he could have borne it, honestly.

So as much as he did indeed pity the Time Lord, he was selfishly glad to have been the cosmic winner in this little not-contest. He would never take for granted the gift he had been given, the gift of making a life with her. 

As soon as Rose finished typing and closed the laptop, sitting back and rubbing her eyes, the Doctor stood and walked over to her side. He wordlessly pulled her up into a hug, letting her cry into his embrace while he stroked her hair and whispered soothing words to the top of her head.

“It's going to be all right. I'm never going to leave you. He knows you love him, and he loves you too. In some small way he'll be happy that you're happy, even if it hurts. He is never going to forget you, and you are never going to forget him, even though you'll still have me.”

She took a shuddering breath and hugged him tighter, then looked up at him with watery eyes.

“Could we just...sit together?”

He nodded, leading the way to the living room, sitting back down on the sofa and gathering her to himself. Her breathing slowly evened out, and she was eventually ready to speak again.

“I just...I dunno, I'd started to forget, just a little. Because you're here. And it just hit me again that he's all alone. If the both of you had just got back into the TARDIS and left me on that beach all by myself, after I'd only just found you, I'd...I can't even...and if I'd lost my mum immediately after that...the only person I had left...”

She cut herself off with another hitching sob. He held her and stroked her hair, tears springing to his own eyes at the thought of being in the Time Lord's place. They sat that way in silence for a while.

“'M sorry,” she whispered at last. “I know you're right here and it feels...I dunno, disloyal or something to be crying over him. But it feels disloyal not to, too. Y'know? And I know you said he'll be all right eventually, and I believe you, but what he must be going through right now...it breaks my heart.” 

“I know. The whole thing is...look, it's barely been a day, so everything is still a bit fresh and raw. It's all right to be sad, and it's all right to wish he didn't have to have such a rough go of it right now. It's even all right to be angry for all of the reasons you were angry yesterday. But it's also all right to be happy. It's all right to appreciate what he gave us – both of us – and not get mired in guilt about it.”

She snuggled closer to him. “Thank you. And I am. Happy to have you, I mean. And to be able to stay in the same universe as my family.”

“So am I,” he said. “And yes, I feel sorry for any version of me that has to be without you. I remember all too clearly the pain of that separation. So I do not envy him the things he's going through and will likely be going through for a while. But all of that would have been for naught if you and I didn't make the most of this second chance together. So I do not intend to let it drag us down or make us feel as though we don't have the right to be happy together.”

“No, you're right. Of course you're right.” She extracted herself from his arms long enough to fetch a tissue. “Blimey I'm sick of crying. Done more crying in the past week than I have in the past year.”

“It's been a very emotional time,” he agreed. “I think we're both entitled the opportunity to decompress. Hey, shall I make us some tea? You could, I don't know, run a bath or something.”

“Would you join me?”

He smiled at her. 

“Absolutely.”

* * *

Rose nearly fell asleep in the bath and easily drifted off when they curled up together afterward. The Doctor lay with her a while, wanting to be close to her even if he wasn't quite ready to sleep himself, but something began to tickle at his brain and wouldn't let up. Easing himself out of the bed, he walked quietly out of the room and down the hall. He made his way over to the foyer and retrieved his suit jacket from the peg by the door. He hadn't checked – in all of the excitement the day before it had honestly not even occurred to him to look, and once the thought did come to mind, he had barely dared to hope (never mind had been rather distracted for much of the morning) – but there was a chance, albeit a very slight one, that there was a spare sonic screwdriver deep within the transdimensional pocket of his blue suit jacket. 

He held his breath as he delved into the breast pocket. Banana...inkless pen from 52nd century Mars...seriously, that's all? In the whole pocket? He furrowed his brow and checked first one waist pocket, then the other. Ball of twine, backup-backup pair of specs, half-empty packet of sweets, come on, come on...yes! There it was, buried deep in the pocket, his broken sonic from the hospital on the moon, retrieved in a fit of sentimental pique (and the desire not to leave sonic technology just lying around in a 21st century Earth hospital, let's not be unreasonable here). He'd ignored it initially, just built himself a new one, but he hadn't been able to bear parting with the screwdriver that had seen him through all of his adventures with Rose. And there it was. He stared at it as it lay in his hand. There was a possibility that he could fix it. Maybe. It would take some time and delicate work, with primitive equipment (relatively speaking), but hope burrowed into his chest and bloomed there. With a functioning sonic screwdriver he would be able to do, well, all sorts of things. 

He walked back to the bedroom, set the broken sonic on Rose's bedside table and spooned up behind her. He allowed himself some time to just enjoy the feel and the smell of her, the sound of her breathing as she slept. Real and human and _his_. There had been some initial rockiness, but it was pretty clear by this point that she had accepted him as the Doctor. As _her_ Doctor. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the back of her head before delving into his mind for any glimmer of the Time Lord across the Void.

It was faint, and the connection was spotty, as the walls between the universes were nearly completely closed, but if he focused hard he could barely make out the roiling and tempestuous mind of his Time Lord counterpart. Who was, indeed, not in a good place. Angry and sad and so alone. The part-human Doctor tried to reach out, tried to gently send a sympathetic nudge, only to be roughly shoved aside as the Time Lord's mental walls slammed firmly into place. _Well fine. If he wants to wallow, who am I to stop him? Certainly in his place, I wouldn't want sympathy and pity from me_. He took the mental rebuff as intended, a sign to stay back, and so he retreated, if somewhat regretfully. It was his last shot at true telepathic contact, quite possibly forever, and to be so harshly dismissed by himself was something of a blow to the gut. So long without that manner of mental connection and still rejecting out of hand any contact with his other self...it hurt. But he supposed he could understand.

He thought about taking some more time to practice tuning his time sense, but it felt so nice to cuddle against Rose's warm, soft body that he found he didn't really want to think about anything in particular. Instead he let himself drift, comfortable and content, until he too was falling gently asleep.


	3. Thursday

_She arrives at a run, as she often had in the early days, before she’d learned how to stick the landing. It’s nighttime (why was it always bloody nighttime?), and a quick glance around reveals she’s in an alleyway of some sort. Slowing to a walk and gathering her composure, she peers out onto the street. Certainly looks like London, though of course she can’t be sure it’s the right London. She aims for casual as she steps out of the alley to join the mass of people bustling down the pavement._

_“Donna!”_

_She whips her head around, heart in her throat. He’s here! She’s found him! Oh thank god, finally, but where? Where?! She begins to run in the direction of his voice, digging her mobile out of her pocket as she ducks and darts around and through the throng._

_“Donna, no!”_

_“Doctor!” she shouts, speed-dialing Control while she continues to search for him. There are too bloody many people, and it’s so dark (why is it so dark in the middle of the city?), and she knows he’s here somewhere but she just can’t quite. . . ._

_“Tyler, report,” comes the curt voice in her ear._

_“He’s here!” she shouts, still unable to believe she’s finally done it, that the search is over at long last. “I heard him, but I can’t get a visual. Help me get a lock on his location!”_

_“Negative, Tyler. We’re pulling you back.”_

_“What?! But you can’t! I heard him, he’s here! You have to help me find him!”_

_She catches a flash of brown in the crowd ahead of her and lunges toward it. Her legs are suddenly leaden, and she fights to keep up as the mass of people shifts and obscures him again._

_“Doctor!” she calls, straining forward._

_“Initiate jump sequence in five, four, three. . . .”_

_“No! No please, Doctor! Doctor!”_

Rose gasped and sat bolt upright in bed, heart racing and hands shaking with adrenaline. As she fumbled to get her bearings and shake off the dream, a low moan beside her made her jump.

“No. . .not Donna. . .please. . . .”

The Doctor’s sweat-soaked brow was furrowed in sleep, and he strained against the tangle of bedding in which he’d managed to wrap himself. Rose gently began to pull at the blankets in order to free him, calming her own ragged breathing enough to begin talking to him in the same soothing tones she’d used so many times before, when he had nightmares about the Time War.

“It’s okay, Doctor. You’re safe. Donna’s safe. ‘S just a dream. Come back to me, Doctor.”

He woke up with a start, eyes darting around wildly. “Ro-Rose?” 

“Shh, yeah, it’s all right, I’m here.”

He pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her neck. His shirt was soaked clean through with sweat, and Rose could feel his heart hammering against her chest. She stroked his hair and held him tighter, the traces of her own nightmare, of her panic over not being able to find him, still lingering. _He’s here. He’s right here._

They stayed that way for several long moments before the Doctor’s grip on her loosened and he heaved a big, shaky sigh. Rose pulled back and propped herself up on an elbow beside him. He gave her a sad half-smile and shrugged. He had never been one for talking about his dreams, and she didn't expect that to have changed. Besides, not everything needed words. She leaned over and kissed him gently, cupping his cheek with her palm. He reached up and brushed his fingertips to her temple, sending her a soft wave of warm gratitude, pulling away with a sharp intake of breath when he picked up on her residual distress.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded. "'M fine. Just had some bad dreams of my own is all."

He put his fingers back up and pushed love and comfort toward her. She let it flow over and through her, chasing away the knot in her stomach and easing the tension in her chest. There was no question there were some huge advantages to this telepathy thing, even if she didn't have the kind of capacity for it that he did. She sent him her thanks and love in return, and then he gently broke the connection.

"Don't believe I've ever woken up in a sweat before," he observed, picking at his shirt and wiping a hand across his brow. "That's. . .a little disgusting, actually. Eugh, sorry about the linens."

Rose snorted. "Well it's happened to me loads of times. Hazard of the human condition, I'm afraid."

She said the last bit with the barest hint of a Northern inflection, as though she were quoting something, and it took the Doctor a beat to realize she was quoting him -- something he'd said to her long, long ago, when he'd sat her down in the infirmary to sonic away the blisters on her feet for the first time. He rolled his eyes good-naturedly before grinning at her.

"My own words coming back to haunt me, eh?"

Rose smiled back at him. "Bet you never expected that!"

"Nope!" he agreed. "Can't say I did." He sat up. "Right, then. Shower. Care to join me?" he asked, one eyebrow arched suggestively.

"Let me put some coffee on, yeah? You get started, and I'll be along in a minute."

The Doctor frowned. "You drink coffee now? I thought you preferred tea."

"Actually yeah, I do like them both now, and you’re right that I still tend to drink tea more often than not, but coffee," explained Rose, "makes itself. And will be waiting for us when we're through. And will stay hot in the coffee maker in case we, oh I dunno, get distracted in the shower?"

He leaned over to kiss the cheeky grin off her face before standing up. "Well in that case, Rose Tyler, coffee sounds brilliant."

* * *

The Doctor stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt with a grimace and dropped it to the tile floor of the en suite. Bloody weird autonomic response, that one. For all that he loved humans and had for a long time, he remained nonetheless just a little bit queasy at the thought of actually _being_ human. Part-human. Whatever. No longer having conscious control over every single aspect of his body and its functions was more than slightly unnerving. It was like paralysis in a way, like looking at your arm and sending the mental command to move it but getting no response. It had only been a couple of days, and he had been blessedly distracted for much of that time, so he was most definitely not used to it yet.

Exposed to the air, the damp skin of his chest and back began to feel chilled, and he quickly turned on the shower to get the water heating up. That was another thing to which he hadn’t yet adjusted: occasionally feeling cold in what would ordinarily have been perfectly comfortable ambient temperatures. He suppressed a shiver, obstinately refusing to give in to every little human reflex. Sure, it was only the tiniest measure of control, but it was something.

After shucking his pyjama bottoms and tossing them atop his shirt, he used the toilet and then stepped into the shower. He couldn’t resist letting out a sigh as the hot water hit his chest, and he closed his eyes, tipping his head forward to let it run down his face. Turning around under the spray, he felt the tension in his shoulders begin to dissipate. There was, he realized, something to be said for having predictable physiological responses to stimuli. These responses could be better catalogued and used to his advantage. Maybe he didn’t have conscious triggers for everything anymore, but he could figure out what the reliable external triggers were.

There was something else he could still do, too. Redirecting his attention inward, the Doctor took a moment to bring his time sense into focus. It was already quite a bit easier to do, and he estimated that by week's end he would be fully and comfortably aligned with the frequencies in this universe. That would be a relief, not having to deal with the static anymore. It also helped him to feel just a little more normal, using one of his few remaining purely Time Lord abilities. His entire life had changed so radically and unexpectedly, and even though many of those changes were for the better, the simple act of accessing timelines was still comforting in its familiarity. 

The combination of the mental exercise and the hot water soon had him feeling more like himself, and he rubbed his face before opening his eyes. Then, hearing Rose enter the room and add her pyjamas to the pile on the floor, he smiled. _Rose_. As troubling as he found it, being suddenly human. . .ish, getting to be with Rose was so, so worth it. 

She pulled back the shower curtain with a grin and an appreciative glance down his body, and he felt himself begin to stir almost immediately in response. As soon as she stepped into the shower, he pulled her into his arms, turning so she could be fully under the spray and reveling in the feeling of her breasts pressed against his rib cage. She sucked in a breath as the water hit her cool skin, and he chuckled. It rumbled through his chest and reverberated against hers, and he pulled her closer.

Rose reached down to pinch his bum, and the Doctor jumped. "Oi!"

She giggled at him and tilted her chin up; he needed no further invitation to lean down and capture her mouth with his own. He allowed himself to get lost for several minutes in the slow slide of her tongue against his, the press of her teeth against his lower lip, the way she sighed into his mouth when his hands began to roam over her back and shoulders and bum. He smoothed back her hair, wetting it fully as he continued to kiss her.

Somehow it took him completely by surprise when her hands were suddenly on him, cupping and stroking, and he broke the kiss to breathe in sharply. His subsequent exhalation became a moan as she began to tease his nipple with her tongue and teeth.

"Oh, Rose. . . ."

"Mmm?" she hummed against him.

"You should definitely feel free to keep doing that."

Rose Tyler's mouth and hands on him in the shower (or anywhere else, really) far surpassed any fantasy or memory. The Doctor had a very impressive mind, equipped with an unparalleled imagination, but it was still no match for the real thing. He fumbled to find her breast with his hand, squeezing gently and giving another moan as she moved her mouth to his collarbone and sucked hard. 

Yes. This? This was most assuredly worth all of the other stuff. In fact, as Rose moved again to kneel down in front of him, the Doctor found he couldn’t quite recall what exactly he had been so bothered about before, anyway.

* * *

As they returned to the bedroom, clad only in towels, the Doctor remembered his discovery from the night before. He bounded over to Rose’s nightstand and picked up the sonic. 

“Look, Rose! I forgot I had this in my coat pocket. Now, it’s broken, so we probably ought not get too excited yet because I might not be able to fix it, but then again, I am very clever, so it’s completely possible I will be able to get it working again. Some of the functions, at least. But this sonic, Rose, this is the very one I had when we traveled together before! It got broken not long after. . .well. . .after I lost you. And at the time, it was easier to just make a new one, but never got round to chucking this one, and now I have it here, and it needs a lot of work, but I think, I _think_ I can fix it.”

Rose waited for him to stop speaking long enough to take a breath.

"How'd it get broken?" she asked, reaching out her hand and wiggling her fingers until he passed her the screwdriver. She turned it over and examined it, pressing the button, though nothing happened when she did.

"Roentgen radiation," he said, matter-of-factly. "Had to use an enormous blast of it in order to kill a slab that was after Martha and me. Unfortunately, fried the sonic's circuitry in the process. It may just be possible to mend it, if I can get access to the right tools and sort out a few approximations of replacement parts."

Rose nodded and handed the tool back to him. "We'll have a talk with Tosh next week, see what she's got in her lab."

"Who's she, then?" the Doctor asked. "Someone at Torchwood, obviously."

"Yeah," Rose confirmed. "Right genius with computers, she is. Electronics of all sorts, really. If Torchwood's got anything that can help, she'll know about it."

"Well then, I look forward to meeting her," the Doctor said with a smile. He placed the screwdriver back on the nightstand and turned to face Rose again. "Now, didn't you say something about coffee?"

* * *

The contents of the knapsack the Doctor had packed at Pete and Jackie’s place were dwindling. He was down to one pair of clean socks and Pete’s (now quite wrinkled and still two sizes too large) trousers. A thorough inspection of Rose’s wardrobe revealed a grand total of two t-shirts that bore even the slightest possibility of fitting him, and one of those was actually a shirt she’d borrowed from Mickey about six months back and never got around to returning. Never mind that the Doctor had all of one pair of pants -- the ones he’d been wearing when they had arrived in the parallel world -- and he’d actually been going commando for most of the last day and a half.

In short, it was laundry day.

And really, as they packed a load’s worth of clothes into a basket and made their way down to the small, shared laundrette in Rose’s building, they both knew that they were only postponing the inevitable.

“Maybe you only think you won’t like it,” Rose suggested, starting the wash cycle. “Maybe you’ll get to the shops and realize Donna’s had more of an influence on you than you thought. I mean, I didn’t know her that well, but she seemed like the type who could appreciate a good bit of shopping.”

The Doctor considered this, albeit skeptically. “I suppose it’s not _entirely_ beyond the realm of possibility. I dunno, it just doesn’t sound appealing, all of the browsing and debating and trying on. You may have noticed I like to find what works and stick to it without a lot of variation. And the TARDIS was always good about helping me sort out my preferences from one regeneration to the next. Donna, though. . .now there’s a woman who does not shy away from variety. You should’ve seen the assortment she brought along when she started traveling with me! No fewer than five big suitcases, and I mean big. And a hatbox! Just on the off-chance we turned up at the ‘Planet of the Hats,’ she told me.”

He shook his head and smiled fondly.

“I was there, did you know?” Rose said quietly. “That was the night with the Adipose, right?" At his stunned nod, she continued. "I saw Donna. She _spoke_ to me. Didn’t know who she was then, of course. Didn’t figure it out ‘til much later, after I met her again in the pocket universe or bubble universe or whatever that was. After we used the Cannon to measure her timeline and patch together the times she was meant to be with you. Blimey, the tear I went on, once we put it all together… Reckon there are some at Torchwood who still think I’m completely mental. But you were _right there_! Not a block from me, only we couldn’t see it because the Cannon had fallen out of calibration and. . . .”

She was digging her fingernails into her palm and had started to shake with the intensity of the memory. The Doctor pushed off from the counter he was leaning against and walked over to wrap his arms around her. Leaning into his embrace, Rose took a deep breath and let it out slowly, calling on the hours of Torchwood stress management training seminars she’d been forced to sit through. She gave a short, self-deprecating chuckle, pulling her arms up and placing her hands on his chest. She rested her forehead on them, sighing as he rubbed soothing circles on her back.

"Anyway," she said, regaining her composure, "would've been nice to know at the time, is all. Could've saved everyone a lot of trouble. Plus I'd have got back to you sooner."

"Well, yes and no," he murmured into the top of her head. "Metacrisis might never have happened in that situation. And if we'd had to go up against Davros and the Daleks without a metacritical Donna Noble, things might've turned out very differently, indeed."

Rose was quiet as she considered this. He was right, she realized. So much of their success on the Crucible had depended upon events unfolding exactly as they had. Then again, if they'd identified the threat before the reality bomb was ready, before the Earth was moved. . .but then how would they have even found the Crucible, hidden out of time in the Medusa Cascade, without the signal from the Earth to pull them through? Truth be told, the complexity of the whole situation was starting to make her head hurt a bit. Sometimes it was hard not to believe in things like fate and destiny when faced with the frankly staggering number of coincidental events that had to line up exactly right in order for things to turn out the way they did.

"Reckon you're right," she agreed at last. "Couldn't possibly see that at the time, though. I was a right mess. Mickey really helped hold me together through all that." She sighed again. "I hope he's finding his feet, back in our old universe. He deserves. . .well, everything. Everything good, anyway."

The Doctor hugged her tighter, resting his chin on her head. "I’m sure he’s doing brilliant things. He came a long way, old Mickity McMickey."

"Yeah, he really did," Rose said. She raised her head and pushed back a little to look up at the Doctor, as he loosened his arms around her. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth gently to hers, and she sighed into the kiss, feeling the ball of tension in her chest melt into a warmth that spread outwards until she wasn't thinking about anything but the places they were in physical contact. Her world narrowed to lips and hands and thighs interleaved and hips pressed firmly together. When they finally pulled apart, he kept his arms looped loosely around her waist, and she gave him a grateful smile before glancing back over at the washing machine. "Well, this'll take a little while to run. What say we pop round the corner for some lunch? D'you fancy sandwiches or curry?" 

He looked down at his comically-large trousers and the t-shirt Rose had won the year before on quiz night at a pub called The Pig’s Knickers. It featured a large cartoon pig, dancing around in frilly pants. "Not sure I'm fit for public display," he said with a shrug. "And anyway, didn't we do that grocery run yesterday precisely so we wouldn't have to go out again today?"

"We're already out of the flat," she pointed out. "May as well stay out while laundry's running. Can pick up your trousers from the cleaner's, while we’re at it. Those ones of Dad's aren't doing your arse any favors."

"I wouldn’t say the trousers were the most striking component of this particular outfit,” he said, lifting an eyebrow.

"You having a go at my Pig’s Knickers shirt, then?" she asked, feigning offense. 

"No, no! It's a perfectly, ah, charming shirt. Not lacking in whimsy, certainly. I suppose, so long as you're not embarrassed to be seen with me, I could do with a curry just fine."

Rose smirked, stepping back and out of his arms. "C'mon then. Let's get some lunch." She took his hand. "Could always do a bit of shopping after, if you're up for it," she added with a wink.

The Doctor pulled a face. "Let's just stick with the curry for now, shall we?"

* * *

“I dunno, 'John Smith' was just convenient and sufficiently anonymous to keep me from standing out. I'm not sure I want to have that name on my official documents for the rest of my life.”

Rose had been pestering the Doctor over lunch about coming up with a name for his “official” Earth records. Torchwood was going to create a legal identity for him, but they couldn't complete the process or print anything until he gave them a name. Most everyone would still call him Doctor anyway; the records were merely a formality. 

He had used dozens of pseudonyms on his travels. "John Smith" was well-suited to Earth between about the 16th and 28th centuries, whereas anytime after about 2850 he was better off going with "Rupert Studebaker." Once he got beyond Earth, a name that human-sounding would have only drawn unwanted attention, so he had a handful of other identities that he used elsewhere in the universe; on Praxis 11, for example, he’d usually gone by "Slarxnl Haf." Even then, he'd only used a pseudonym when he absolutely couldn't get away with just being 'the Doctor,' and such occasions were really quite rare.

“A name should mean something,” Rose agreed, scooping up the last bit of rice and stacking her now-empty plate atop his. “I mean, most of us don't get to choose what we're called, but people tend to have reasons for the names they choose for their children, yeah? Not always, of course. Sometimes you just like the way something sounds. But being named in honor of someone is pretty standard. So go on, then. You must have a thousand people who've meant something special to you over the years.”

“An embarrassment of riches there, yeah.” He was quiet a moment, thoughtful, recalling the names of all of his male friends and former traveling companions. “Well, there was Ian. And Harry. Adric, the Brigadier, Jamie. . . I took Jamie's name when we met Queen Victoria. Jamie McCrimmon, d'you remember? Mostly because he was Scottish and it worked to gain the favor of the queen's guards, but Jamie was. . .he meant a lot to me.”

“Well, you don't look much like a Jamie to me, to be honest,” she said with a half smile. “But James. James could work. Or did you just mean taking his surname?”

“Well, I was thinking of the first name. I could see being a James, perhaps, if circumstances required it. But McCrimmon's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? Ordinarily not something I'd mind, but if I'm going to be signing documents and the like, maybe I'd prefer something a bit shorter. Of course, Chesterton and Lethbridge-Stewart are no better, and Sullivan’s a bit. . .I don’t know, dull? And anyway, I thought,” he looked off to the side, reaching up to rub the back of his neck and lowering his voice to a mumble, “thought maybe I could, y’know, be a. . .a Tyler.”

Rose felt a pleasant swooping in her stomach at his tentative admission. The idea of sharing a name with him was something she had never allowed herself to dwell on too much. She had long ago convinced herself she didn't want or need any of that -- rings and vows and name-sharing -- but some small part of her was still very much in favor of the prospect, somewhere down the road. For a few moments, she didn't know what to say, and he took her silence as discomfort.

"Of course," he rushed to clarify, "I don't know how practical that would be, me turning up out of nowhere and just happening to have your same surname. Not that Tyler is terribly uncommon, mind. But I suppose it's best to not risk the misconception that I'm some sort of blood relative, especially if we're. . .say. . .caught out snogging in public or something."

Rose burst out laughing. "That something you're planning on, then? Lots of public snogging?"

He silenced her by leaning across the table, albeit somewhat awkwardly, and pressing his lips to hers. At her startled, sharp intake of breath, he took advantage of the opportunity to run his tongue along the roof of her mouth. She shut her eyes and hummed against him, sighing a little when he pulled away. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she saw him grinning smugly at her.

"Point taken," she conceded. "But who do you figure would catch us out, as you say, and why should they care or even know what our names are?"

The Doctor frowned. "Well I just figured, Pete Tyler being who he is, and Earth culture being what it is, you might be, erm. . . ."

"What, famous?" Rose chuckled. "Nah. Paps used to bother about Dad and his first Jackie, back when he was Mister Vitex, but after the Cybermen, he sort of gave up on the whole socialite lifestyle and they eventually quit bothering with him. Once he took over Torchwood, he went even lower profile. Didn't want to draw any unnecessary attention, obviously. So he handed basically all of his Vitex duties over to his second-in-command. Still owns the company, but he hasn't got anything to do with the day-to-day operations anymore, and he certainly doesn't act as spokesman. Hardly anyone even knows who he is, these days."

The Doctor nodded, thoughtfully. "Well, yeah, that does make sense."

"When Mum and I turned up," Rose continued, "we came up with these elaborate backstories. Mum hadn't been killed in the Cyber attack like everybody'd thought, but instead she'd got lost in the chaos, clocked on the head, was some unidentified coma patient in hospital til she woke up with amnesia. Like something straight out of Emmerdale. Mum _loved_ it, oh you should've seen her. As for me, I was their child born out of wedlock and given up for adoption when they were too young and poor to care for me. Brought up in Sussex, and when my adoptive parents died in a car crash, Mum and Dad tracked me down and brought me into the family." She shook her head, laughing. "No one could've cared less. Well, a few close friends of Dad's, but not the press or anything. I'm no heiress, even though Tony and me are set to inherit all kinds of money and property one day."

"That does simplify things, not having to live your life in the public eye," he said. "Still. If it's too complicated to explain another mystery Tyler, I can always go with something else."

She reached across the table for his hand, which he gave her with a soft smile. "You know you're part of the family anyway, yeah? And you and me, we don't need. . .I mean, there's no rush. . . .”

“No, no rush,” he agreed, squeezing her fingers. “I’ll figure out something else to call myself. Just might have to think about it a while.”

"Could always go with Harkness," Rose teased, picking up her water glass to take a sip. "I'm sure Jack would be honored."

The Doctor shuddered. "Somehow I feel like he'd know, even a universe away, if there were even the slightest chance you had even the barest hint of a shred of a reason to shout his name in bed."

Rose wrenched her hand from the Doctor's grasp in order to clap it over her mouth; she wasn't quite fast enough, and some of the water she'd been drinking shot out between her fingers and landed on the table. She closed her eyes, concentrating on swallowing the last of it, before letting her shocked laughter overtake her. The Doctor chuckled at her and used his napkin to mop up the droplets on the table. 

"I can't believe you said that!" she gasped. "But he would. He so would!"

"Really, I'd be better off with Boe. Can't beat Boe on brevity, after all, and somehow he never felt wrong the way Jack did after. . . ."

"What, you mean like the Face of Boe?" she interrupted. "What, did you and him travel together after. . .when I was gone?"

He shook his head, grinning. “No, no traveling together, though that would have been quite something! I did see him one more time, on New Earth with Martha. No, the reason I mention him is that he and Jack Harkness,” he leaned forward and raised one eyebrow, conspiratorially, “are the same person.”

“What are you on about?” Rose asked, brow furrowed in disbelief. “How is that even possible?”

“I dunno!” he said, delighted. “Never did find out how. But somewhere, over the course of millions of years, our good Captain apparently went and evolved into a great big, enigmatic head in a jar!”

“You’re having me on,” she insisted, shaking her head. “You can’t just. . .there’s no way the Face of Boe was a human. Evolved or no, I don’t believe it.”

The Doctor shrugged, still grinning broadly. “I don’t reckon you have to believe anything. I only know that Jack said he was called ‘The Face of Boe’ as a lad, on account of his representing the Boeshane Peninsula when he went off to join the Time Agency.”

Rose scoffed. “But that. . .that could just be a coincidence. That’s really all you’re basing this on?”

“Weeeeeeell,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking off toward the corner of the room for a moment, “I suppose it’s not exactly _incontrovertible_ evidence. But come on. You have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense.”

She smiled at him, shaking her head again. “I don’t have to admit anything of the sort. You, on the other hand, have to admit you're grasping at straws with this Boe-theory of yours.”

"I'll have you know I've never grasped at a straw in all my lives," he said with a sniff. "I only draw conclusions based on evidence and hard facts."

Rose snorted. "Deluded, bless."

He smiled at her, reaching out again for her hand. "Well I'll admit one thing, if I must. I admit that I'm finding it more difficult than I anticipated to choose a name for myself. The last time I made a name choice that actually mattered was when I decided to call myself the Doctor. And that came so easily. It just. . .felt right."

"So you just haven't found the right one yet," she said with a shrug. "You've only gone through a few so far. Who else did you travel with, over the years?"

“Well, restricting the field to traveling companions, we’re running low on blokes’ names, now. I’m not calling myself Turlough, and…”

"What about Noble?” she asked, quietly.

His mouth fell open. How did she always manage to say the exact right thing? He hadn't even been thinking about the women's names, yet. But keeping a bit of Donna with him. . . .

He stood and walked to her side of the booth; he slid in beside her and wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his face in her neck. She stiffened, afraid she had upset him.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. . . .”

“It's perfect.”

* * *

Back in her bedroom much later that evening, basket of clean clothes between them, Rose and the Doctor sat on the bed, sorting and folding the laundry. There was something weirdly intimate about the whole thing, and Rose couldn’t quite explain why the sight of their commingled clothing was so deeply satisfying. It was such a simple thing, really, the sort of mundane task they'd never really bothered to undertake together before. 

Perhaps it was just that even after they were “together” on the TARDIS, they still had somewhat separate spaces and did spend time apart. Now they were sharing a hundred square meters instead of a dimensionally transcendent time ship. It should maybe have felt unpleasantly confining, and she supposed maybe it did to him, but to her it felt. . .nice. Comfortable and close and on the brink of something new. 

Shaking herself from her musings, Rose stood and opened her dresser drawer to put away her socks, pausing when she saw the TARDIS coral resting there. She pulled it out and gently cradled it in her palm.

"D'you think we'll really be able to shatter the. . .what did Donna say?" she asked, handing the bit of coral over to the Doctor and coming to stand beside the bed where he still sat.

"Shatterfry the plasmic shell," he said, turning the coral over and over in his hands. "And yes, I think it should be possible, given the right equipment, which I'll likely have to make from scratch. Unless Torchwood just happens to have a gamma-driven biostimulation chamber just lying around."

Rose shrugged. "Doesn't sound familiar, but I've spent the last couple of years so focused on the Cannon project that I'm honestly not sure what else they might have in the labs."

"I'd be shocked to find one here, honestly," the Doctor said with a small grin. "Not the sort of technology that would just fall to Earth, and not many civilizations aside from Time Lords are even technologically advanced enough to make one in the first place."

"But you can? Make one yourself, I mean."

"Well," he said, tilting his head, "it'll certainly be easier to do if I can fix my sonic first. And there are no guarantees that I can find suitable components. Not the sort of thing you want to do slap-dash, though that _is_ sort of my specialty." He grinned at her. "But yes. I'd say we have about. . .oh. . .an 86% chance of success, all things considered."

The coral thrummed ever so slightly in his hands, and he brushed his thumbs gently over the surface. It was nearly unfathomable, the amount of potential stored within such a small thing. He was almost afraid to acknowledge how desperately he wanted their TARDIS-growing efforts to be successful. He loved Rose, and he truly did want this life with her more than anything, but if he were being completely honest, the thought of never having a connection with another TARDIS for the remainder of his now-quite-abbreviated life was more than a little bit terrifying.

Rose reached out and stroked the coral with her fingertips. “I missed her so much, y’know? Almost as much as I missed you. I hope. . .I mean, if we can’t, it’ll still be okay, but I really hope…”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Me too.”

“Eighty-six percent chance? ‘S a lot better than impossible, yeah?”

He nodded, chuckling. “Quite a bit better than impossible. Then again, you seem to eat impossible for breakfast. I suspect, between the two of us, the combination of sheer will and exceptional cleverness would prove quite formidable against even the most daunting of odds.”

"All the same, I could do with a bit of a break from impossible," Rose said with a snort. "Wouldn't mind having some more attainable goals for a while, if that's all right."

The Doctor set the coral on the bed and pulled Rose down to sit sideways across his lap. He pressed a kiss to her temple, using the physical contact to telepathically project how proud he was of her, of what she'd accomplished. He could sense her own pride in herself as a tiny ball of shining golden light, tucked safely at the center of her being, surrounded by her love for him, for her family, for the other him on the other side of the Void. But he could also sense lingering clouds of self-doubt, worries about whether he would think less of her for losing some of her enthusiasm for the sorts of situations they used to encounter while traveling together. _Oh, Rose._ He focused on the tiny golden ball and fed it, watching it grow until the clouds dissipated and she sagged against him with a grateful sigh. Gently breaking the connection, he turned his head to meet her eyes with his own.

"You have done amazing things," he said. "But I know how exhausting that can be. You are absolutely entitled to a break. And do you know, even though seemingly-impossible challenges are incredibly stimulating, I think I'm okay with challenges that are merely extremely difficult for a while, myself."

She smiled broadly and hugged him tightly. "I can live with extremely difficult." She pressed a kiss to his lips and moved to stand up again so she could finish putting the clean clothes away. "So, sonic first, then biostimulation chamber?"

"Yup," he said. "Unfortunately, I think Torchwood resources are going to be required for both of these things. I'd much rather not be beholden to them, but I don't really see any way around it. The amount of power required for shatterfrying alone. . .well, suffice it to say we'd easily blow every circuit breaker in the whole block of flats if we tried to do it here."

Rose nodded. "Well, figure out what we'll need, and we can have it written into your employment contract."

The Doctor wrinkled his nose. "Employment? Don't know how I feel about that."

"Well, you said you don't want to owe them, yeah? I guess I just assumed we'd both. . .I mean, as a temporary sort of thing, just until the TARDIS is ready. . .it's just the most practical solution, innit?"

He had to admit he hadn't given any thought at all to the matter of his potentially needing to have a “real” job. It wasn’t as though he’d never worked for anyone before, but it had been centuries since his last period of actual employment (not counting the times he'd managed to get himself temporarily hired someplace specifically in order to investigate strange goings-on). Then again, Rose was right; it really did make a certain amount of sense, his working for Torchwood. He would have access to resources that might otherwise be nearly impossible to find. He would probably be able to demand the sort of flexibility he wouldn't be able to find in, say, a teaching job.

Plus, he would be close to Rose.

"Look, we don't have to talk about it tonight," Rose said gently. "You can think about it, and if there's something else you think would work out better, that's fine, too. I'm sorry, I shouldn't've just assumed. . . ."

He shook his head. "No, no, I think you're right. I mean, I don't exactly love the idea, but I think it probably is the most practical option. Just have to figure out logistics and all that. Tell me, what exactly is Torchwood all about, in this universe?"

Sorting out the logistics turned out to be rather more complicated than the Doctor had even imagined, but by the end of it, they had a fairly solid proposal they could present to Pete at week's end. It was after three in the morning by the time they finally gave up talking about it for the night, curling up against each other with sleepy kisses and lightly clasped hands.


	4. Friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL of the gratitude to [crazygirlne](http://crazygirlne.tumblr.com) for beta-tasticness and saving me from making a big ol' glaring mistake in this chapter.

Rose's hand moved out of sheer reflex, groping around to locate and neutralize the offending sound. The mobile was already up at her ear before she awoke fully.

"'Lo?" she mumbled.

"Rose? Sorry, did I wake you? It's after eleven."

Pete's voice cut through the remaining haze of sleep, and Rose sat up in bed. Pete didn't call often, and even then, almost always on her Torchwood-issued mobile, not this one. She immediately worried something might be wrong with her mum or Tony.

"Is everything all right?"

Pete chuckled, and Rose relaxed marginally. "Well, I'm likely to catch an earful from your mother for this because she wanted to surprise you, but I thought you could do with a warning. She's on her way over."

"What? Why? It's only been two days. I thought. . .I dunno, I just thought we weren't meant to check in for a week. What's she on about?"

There was a sigh over the line. “Oh, you know how Jackie is once she gets her mind set on something. She really does just want to help, Rose. Please try to remember that. Anyway. You’d better shift. She’ll likely be along in about twenty minutes.”

Rose groaned and looked over at the Doctor, who continued to snore lightly beside her. She brought a hand up to rub her face. “Right. Don’t suppose you could at least tell me what she’s up to, so I know what to expect.”

“She’s, erm. . . .” Pete hedged. “She wanted to do something nice for the Doctor. For you both. And she reckoned you wouldn’t want to bother with leaving the flat for a while, that you’d have a lot to. . .erm. . .talk about. So she popped out yesterday for some. . .well, she said necessities.”

“But we did go out and pick up some food, day before yesterday. And besides, she knows we can always order in.”

“I did try to make that argument, yes, but she insisted. And anyway,” Pete continued, “food was not exactly her primary area of focus.”

Rose struggled to put the pieces together, still not exactly at her most alert and focused. Slowly it dawned on her, but no. . .she wouldn’t. . . .

“She went shopping for clothes? For the Doctor?!” she squeaked.

Pete made a noncommittal hum. “Just. . .remember that her heart’s in the right place. Now go on. And if you could maybe not mention that I called, that would be lovely, ta.”

Rose sighed. “Right, then. Thanks for the heads-up, Dad.”

“Sure thing, love. Good luck.” 

Disconnecting the call, Rose looked over again at her sleeping Doctor, then at the clock. Blimey, they really had slept late. Still, what was her mother thinking, turning up unannounced? She shook her head and heaved another sigh. The Doctor was likely to be less than thrilled. Sure, he'd grown far less resistant to "domestics" since his leather-wearing days, but interacting with Jackie could be sort of exhausting for him under the best circumstances (plenty of warning, reasonable expectations as to what the interaction would entail, clear understanding of his expected level of involvement, those sorts of things). A surprise visit, with her barging into the place he was only starting to be able to consider his? That was rather significantly less than ideal.

Unfortunately, they didn't have much of a choice in the matter; Jackie was already on her way. Rose decided she could at least ease him into the news. Well, sort of. They didn’t exactly have loads of time. Opting for as gentle a wake-up as she could manage, she set the phone down and curled herself against his sleeping form, placing a hand on his chest and rubbing softly.

“Doctor? Time to wake up. Come on, then. It’s nearly half eleven. Can’t go sleeping the day away like a teenager, you know.”

He stirred, yawning as he arched his back in a stretch before rolling to face her. “Mmm, whyever not? Here we are, obligation-free, barely clothed. . . .” he trailed off as he brushed his fingertips across the swell of her hip, revealed by her vest top riding up slightly.

She shivered and tried to keep from being distracted. “Ah-as to your first point, erm, as it happens. . .mymum’sonherwayover.”

So much for easing him into it.

The Doctor stiffened, panicking slightly at the thought of facing Jackie Tyler in his pyjamas. Not that he hadn't, before, but he hadn't been shagging her daughter, then. 

"You invited your mother over?" he asked in a careful tone.

"Oi!" Rose smacked him lightly on the shoulder. "I didn't _invite_ her. Dad just called to warn me she's on her way. Wanted to surprise us, though I can't imagine why she thought that'd be a brilliant idea. Though really, in her defense, it is nearly lunchtime. Normal people aren't still lounging about half-clothed at this hour."

"But, but she knows we've. . . ." he spluttered. "We might've been starkers in the living room right now, if we hadn't still been asleep!"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "That so?"

"Well, it's certainly a possibility! Reunion-after-separation-across-dimensions, Rose. We're well within our rights to be shagging nearly nonstop, you know."

She giggled at him. "Reckon you're not wrong, there. God, can you imagine, her turning up while we're. . . ?"

"As it happens, yes, I can. Perfectly." He shuddered, causing her to giggle more.

"Well, we'd better get moving," she said. "You go put the kettle on while I grab a shower. A _quick_ shower," she clarified, before he had a chance to suggest anything. "You can have a turn after, but we can't dawdle. She'll likely be here in about 15 minutes."

* * *

Rose had just finished fixing herself a cup of tea when she heard the knock at the door. Not bad timing, that. Remembering that her mother’s visit was meant to be a surprise, she was prepared to put on a shocked face, but as she opened the door to reveal Jackie standing in the hall with six huge bags hanging off her arms, Rose found she didn’t even have to pretend.

“Mum?! What on earth. . . ?”

Jackie pushed her way past Rose and into the flat, dropping the bags on the floor of the entryway. “Now, before you get all tetchy, this is for your own good. You’re gonna thank me for this, you are.”

Rose stared, stunned, at the pile on the floor. She was so busy gawking that she was nearly thrown off balance when Jackie wrapped her in a tight hug.

"Mum, just what _is_ all this?"

Jackie pulled away and bent to pick up one of the bags. "Well, I didn't know if you two would fancy leaving the flat for a while, so I nipped out yesterday and picked you up some essentials." She paused, looking around. "Where's himself, anyway? You two are getting on all right, aren't you?"

Rose took the bag from her mum and nodded. "He's just finishing up in the shower." She smiled as she saw two large bunches of bananas, a jar of marmalade, and a box of the Doctor's favorite kind of biscuits nestled among the contents. She carried the bag into the kitchen and set it on the counter, then began unpacking it. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, love, I won't stay long. Don't wanna be in the way, but I just wanted to see you were properly supplied for a while and wouldn't have to live on take-out. And I reckoned if I'd've asked first, you'da never let me do it, but you and I both know the Doctor would hate having to go out and shop for clothes. And all he's got's that one suit, and he can't very well get by with just that! So I've saved you both the trouble. Call it a welcome home present. Oh, here he is, now!"

The Doctor entered the room, barefoot in his own suit trousers and t-shirt, hair still damp from the shower.

"Oh, hello!" he said brightly, and Rose gave him an appreciative smile over her mum's head. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"Mum's brought us some supplies," she explained, holding up one of the banana bunches to illustrate. "Looks like you're going to get out of that shopping trip, after all."

"It's just the basics," Jackie said, "but it should do you for now. I've always had a good eye for sizes. But there's tags and receipts and all, if anything wants exchanging."

It was the Doctor's turn to look stunned. "You. . .you bought clothes? For me?"

"Oi, god knows when you'da got round to it on your own, and you can't get by with just the one suit. I told Rose already, I said, you'll thank me for it later, even if you think you're cross with me now."

"It was thoughtful of you, Mum," Rose said, coming to stand beside the Doctor and looping an arm around his waist. "Thank you."

"Well, it was the least I could do," said Jackie, stepping forward to place one hand on Rose's arm and the other on the Doctor's. "I spent the last year thinking I was going to lose you forever once that cannon thing finally worked. Still can't get over you staying here and having a reason to be happy about it, so yeah, I'm bloody grateful to this lump here." She gave the Doctor's arm an affectionate squeeze, then clapped her hands together. "Right, then! I'll be off. Oh, and Pete says he'll get you in with his tailor if you decide you want another proper suit or two. Just give us a ring."

The Doctor reached out and gave her a hug. "Thank you, Jackie. I really do appreciate the gesture."

“Blimey, don’t recall you ever being this gracious before. Turning human’s certainly done you some good!” she said, surprised. When he pulled away she added, with a wink, “Or is it all the sex?”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped open, and Rose’s cheeks flushed.

“Mum!”

“Oh, there’s no shame in it, sweetheart. Not as if I don’t understand what it’s like,” Jackie said, turning to Rose and pulling her in for a hug. “I’m just glad you’re happy. Oh, and tomorrow’s Saturday, but we won’t expect to see you for tea. You’ve still got catching up to do, and that’s fine. You’ve got a pass for this weekend, but next weekend you’re coming round, hear? Your brother’s about gone out of his mind, wanting to meet the Doctor properly.” She nodded toward the Doctor. “Five minutes with you the other day, even with you all distracted and fretting, and he’s hardly talked about anything else since.”

“We’ll come visit next week sometime,” Rose promised. “Give my love to Tony and Dad, eh? And thanks again, Mum.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Give us a ring if you need anything.”

After Jackie left, Rose gave the Doctor a small grin and shrugged her shoulders as he stared, a bit dazed, at the bags on the floor. “She does mean well.”

He nodded at her, dumbstruck. Beneath his involuntary panic over what in the hell he was supposed to do with all of this stuff, he found himself feeling. . .appreciative? Pleased, even. He couldn’t recall the last time someone had gone out of his or her way to do something like this for him. His eyes grew misty as he realized that Jackie was treating him like a son; he hadn’t been treated like anyone’s son in almost a millennium, and even at that, Time Lords weren’t exactly the most affectionate parents. Not in the same way humans typically were. Oh, Jackie had treated him like Rose's bloke, before, but this felt different somehow. It felt, truth be told, rather fantastic.

"Doctor, it's okay," Rose said quietly, putting a hand on his arm. "You don't have to deal with any of this right now. Hell, you don't have to keep any of it, if you don't want. Only please don't be angry with her. I know she overstepped, but. . . ."

"I'm not angry," he interrupted. "I'm a bit overwhelmed, yes, but not angry. Not even a little."

“Yeah?” she asked, giving him a tentative smile.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. He grinned warmly at her and pulled her into a hug, feeling her sigh and relax against him. “Should we perhaps. . .we should eat something, yes? Before we attempt to deal with all of this?”

“Probably a good idea,” Rose agreed. “Tell you what. D’you think you could make us some omelets, like you used to? I’ve never been able to fix them quite like you do, and, well, I’ve missed having them. And while you do that, I can take all this stuff back to the bedroom and sort through it a bit, maybe make it a little less overwhelming, yeah? That all right?"

“I think that sounds like a brilliant plan,” he said, tipping her chin up to kiss her softly. “Thank you.”

* * *

Rose stared at the contents of the first four shopping bags, now arranged neatly into piles on the bed. The fifth bag, which appeared to contain socks, pants, and jimjams, sat still unemptied on the floor. She had to hand it to her mum; Jackie had actually done quite well. For a start, she’d picked out a nice assortment of dress trousers, Oxfords in white, blue, and black, and a handful of neckties. That would suit the Doctor nicely for work and the like, all of it well within his comfort zone.

Then there were the items that might press the boundaries of that comfort zone a bit. Rose eyed the jeans and jumpers, not quite the same sort that he’d worn when she first met him, but similar enough to cause her breath to catch just a little when she’d pulled them out of the bag. Some soft t-shirts and Henleys in various colors rounded out the collection. It was a nice mix of smart and casual, and she suspected that even though the Doctor might never have picked out some of the things for himself, he might well end up pleasantly surprised.

“Rose! Omelets are ready!”

She smiled. Mornings on the TARDIS had mostly been tea-and-toast affairs, but every so often (usually when he wanted to apologize for something), the Doctor would make omelets for them both. Try as she might, Rose had never quite been able to replicate the delicate, fluffy texture he’d so perfected. Granted, she hadn’t really tried all that many times, after their separation; her sorry few attempts had only served to depress her further when they didn't even come close to meeting her expectations. 

She didn’t much like to dwell on those early days, the few months before and the month or so after “You can’t.” It wasn’t hard at all to recall, with terrible clarity, the intensity of her grief and the near claustrophobic sense of being trapped, confined to the wrong world and more alone than she’d ever felt in her whole life. Working for Torchwood had been difficult and frustrating, but it had also been a blessing, providing near-constant distraction and something resembling a sense of purpose. The Cannon project had given her back some of the optimism she thought she’d lost forever, even as it introduced her to horrors she’d never imagined. She’d thrown herself into her work, desperate to block out the pain and keep the depression and hopelessness at bay.

Tamping down the memories before they could overtake her, Rose squared her shoulders and turned to head down the hallway and join the Doctor. She walked into the dining room just as he was setting plates on the table, a thoroughly pleased expression on his face. 

“Oh, those look gorgeous,” she said, matching his grin with one of her own.

“With any luck, they’ll taste as good as they look, though I’m afraid they won’t be _quite_ the same without the Galiian cheese crumbles on top. Had to make do with grated red Leicester. Still, should be edible, at least.”

“More than edible,” Rose assured him as she pulled out a chair and sat down. She took a moment to admire the lovely, eggy creation on the plate in front of her. 

The Doctor walked back into the kitchen, returning with two fresh cups of tea just as Rose was putting the first bite into her mouth. “Well? What’s the verdict, then?”

She closed her eyes and gave a little moan, and he made a happy noise in the back of his throat. 

“I’ll take that as a positive review,” he said with a wink, sitting down to tuck into his own omelet.

“You have _got_ to teach me how to make these. Seriously, I don’t know how you get them to come out so perfectly. Mine always get stuck to the pan, and maybe I put too much veg in them because they always fall apart, and then it’s more like a sad, dry scramble than a proper omelet.”

“Well, I can’t give away _all_ my secrets, now can I?” he teased. “Besides, I’m more than happy to be the designated egg preparation specialist. Not as if I’m going anywhere, after all.”

The hand holding her fork paused halfway to Rose’s mouth as she felt an irrational swell of panic at his words. _You can’t know that!_ she wanted to shout. _And if I lose you again, it’s not going to be to a matter of leaping across dimensions to get you back. It’s going to be permanent, and I don’t know how I’m going to handle that, and oh god, I can’t. . . ._

“Rose? Rose, what’s wrong?”

She jerked back to awareness, nearly dropping the fork. She set it down carefully and met his worried gaze with wide eyes, her mouth trying to form words.

“Sorry, I. . .I just. . . .” She took a deep breath, and he reached over to gently take her hand. She squeezed his fingers gratefully, and he nodded, encouraging her to continue. “‘S just that nothing’s certain, you know? Reckon I’m still a bit. . .we didn’t exactly plan to get separated before. It just happened. So for all that you say you’re not going anywhere, I can’t help remembering. . .I mean, you’re the one who said to never say ‘never ever.’”

The Doctor sighed, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. 

“I know, I know I told you that’s no way to live, worrying about the future and what might happen someday,” she pressed on. “And I don’t mean to be. . .you’ve made this lovely brunch, and here I am losing my mind over some perfectly ordinary thing for you to say. I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m fine, really. I swear I haven’t spent the whole of the past few years falling apart over every little thing.”

He shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize, Rose. You have been dealt some fairly significant trauma. We both have. Nine centuries in, I’ve developed a coping mechanism or two, but I know just how easy it is to be unexpectedly thrown by something seemingly innocuous.” He squeezed her hand. “There are times when you have to be strong for everyone else, to press on even when you want to go to pieces. And then once you’re finally able to let your guard down, sometimes you just get blindsided. And that’s normal. And it doesn’t mean that you’re weak.” He reached up with his other hand to cup her cheek, quiet for a moment before he continued. “I know that I can’t promise that nothing will ever happen to me, but as far as matters of choice are concerned, I am here. With you, for you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Taking another deep breath and letting it out slowly, Rose nodded. She leaned over to press her lips to his, firmly but chastely. “You’d bloody well better be,” she murmured against his mouth, pulling back with a smile. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he said, releasing her hand with one last squeeze. “Now, if it’s not out of line, may I suggest we eat these before they get any colder? They’re not nearly as good when they’re cold, and I don’t want my first omelets in this universe to be all limp and clammy and disappointing.”

Rose laughed. “God, yeah. No one wants limp and clammy and disappointing. Good thing that’s never a worry with you,” she teased, her tongue making its customary appearance between her teeth.

He feigned shock. “Rose Tyler, you cheeky minx!”

“Oh, you love it,” she said, picking up her fork and taking another bite.

“Oh yes.”

* * *

While Rose did the clearing up, the Doctor wandered back to the bedroom to have a look at the things Jackie had brought for him. True to her word, Rose had sorted everything into nice, manageable piles. He picked up the topmost pair of trousers, dark grey with a subtle pinstripe, and held them up to his waist. At least from a first approximation, they seemed to be his size, and the quality of both the cut and the fabric certainly spoke to Jackie’s good taste and the Tylers’ means. He gave a surprised-but-approving nod, eyebrows raised, lower lip protruding slightly. The other trousers in the pile were of similar style and quality. They were just the sort he’d likely have picked out for himself, and he hadn’t even had to walk into a store. Score one for Jackie.

The Oxfords were fairly standard. He wasn’t sure about the black one, though he supposed that the swirly blue-and-silver tie Rose had set out with it did serve as a nice complement. He would have to try it all on later to see for certain. The t-shirts and Henleys were all fine; he was quite a fan of layers, after all. The blue jeans, however, earned a bit of a wrinkled nose. 

“Give them half a chance, at least. Bet your arse would look amazing in them.”

He spun around to see Rose leaning against the door frame with a smirk on her face. He raised an eyebrow at her. 

“Is that so?” he asked. “Jeans? Really?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Definitely.”

“Not sure I agree, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to try,” he sniffed, moving to pick up the bag from the floor. “And what’s in here, then?”

“Oh, I didn’t get a chance to go through it, but I think just pants and socks and jimjams.”

“Your mother bought me pants?!” he squeaked.

"Well, you do need them, and it's not as though you were really keen on going shopping for any yourself," Rose pointed out, while he dug around in the bag. 

He pulled out a package of boxer briefs and held them at arm’s length. Then he pulled them closer, brow furrowing as he read the label. “Rose? How does your mother know what sort of pants I wear?”

She smirked. “Well, she did help me when you were unconscious after your regeneration went a bit wrong."

"Ah. Right." He'd forgotten about that. Well, not so much forgotten as deliberately ignored the implications of the fact that he'd succumbed to the healing coma wearing his denim and leather and awakened to find himself clad in Jackie's boyfriend's jimjams.

"They're only pants, Doctor," Rose chided. "And it's not as though she sewed them herself," she added with a giggle. "Though we've got the receipts. Could always go out and exchange these for an identical pack."

He heaved a put-upon sigh. "No, I suppose that would be silly. All right, then, what else have we got in here?"

The Doctor brightened at the discovery of soft flannel and polar fleece pyjama bottoms and another package of tagless t-shirts. Those would do brilliantly; he did rather adore pyjamas and had decided that, for all his complaints about needing more sleep in this new body, and least it gave him an excuse to spend hours in comfy sleeping clothes every single night.

He pulled out a loose pair of patterned socks, next. They were blue with little dancing bananas all over them. His face broke into a wide grin.

"Ooh, but these are brilliant! Socks with bananas, Rose!"

She laughed. "Say what you will about her sense of timing, but you can’t deny Mum's got you pegged."

He did have to admit, Jackie had surprised him with how well her purchases aligned with his tastes, overall. He still wasn't convinced about the jeans, but Rose's endorsement was enough to intrigue him, at least. He'd sort of skipped over the jumpers without examining them too closely, though Rose had stuck an Oxford inside one of them, collar and cuffs sticking out, and he supposed that didn't look terrible. Again, he would reserve final judgment until after he'd tried them on.

Peering back into the bag, he caught a bit of lavender silk sticking out from beneath the two packages of socks. Raising an eyebrow, he grabbed ahold of it and tugged.

"Well, now," he said, holding up the slinky nightdress. "This is quite lovely and all, but I don't think it'll fit me.”

“Oh for the love of. . . .”

“Oh come now, Rose,” he teased. “It’s only sleepwear, after all! And magnificent sleepwear, at that.”

Rose arched an eyebrow. “ _That_ is not sleepwear. That is shagwear. Purchased by my _mother_."

"Well, we could always return it. Exchange it for an identical one."

"Nah," she scoffed, "don't like it anyway."

"No? Why not? It's lovely."

"Don't like the color."

"It's the same color as those knickers you have with the, you know, the little bows on the sides."

"Too much lace."

"There's hardly any lace on it! And besides, since when do you object to lacy underthings?"

"'S not an. . .underthing." Rose shrugged and pulled her mobile out of her pocket. "But I reckon, if you are so very fond of it, I should really text Mum and let her know how much you appreciate it."

"Fine, yeah, good idea," he countered, calling her bluff. He thought. Wait, why was she still typing?

"And how you can't _wait_ to see me wear it."

"Well, naturally. . . ." He craned his neck a bit, trying to read her phone's screen, but she tilted it away from his view.

"I should probably also let her know how much you're looking forward to taking it off of me. . . ."

She squealed and dodged as he thrust his hand toward the phone. He stumbled forward, dropping the shopping bag as she ducked under his arm and spun past him toward the en suite. The Doctor quickly regained his footing and whirled to face her, but Rose was already making a break for the bedroom door. He snaked an arm around her waist, but she twisted and slid by him, sprinting down the hallway. Grinning broadly, he gave chase, and not without a fair bit of appreciation for the sight of Rose Tyler from behind.

At the end of the hallway, she took a sharp left into the dining area, darting around the table. She pulled a chair out behind herself, which would have worked out well to slow him down had he followed her, but he ran around the table to head her off, instead. She yelped and turned around, leaping over the chair and narrowly evading his grasp as he sped back around to the other side of the table. She careened into the living room, faltering ever so slightly as she attempted to scramble over the top of the sofa. It was just enough of a wobble to allow the Doctor to catch up and grab her about the waist, pulling her backward so that they both collapsed, giggling, onto the sofa.

Rose rolled, then, flinging one leg over his waist to straddle him. He raised an eyebrow and unabashedly raked his gaze down her body, rather admiring the way her chest heaved a bit from the exertion.

“Not bad, Agent Tyler,” he said. “And I can’t help noticing you’ve managed to gain the upper hand, in the end.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve picked up a thing or two, haven’t I?” She squeezed his hips with her thighs for emphasis. “So you keep those tricky fingers to yourself and away from my mobile, yeah?”

His other eyebrow joined the first, high up on his forehead. “They’re tricky fingers, are they? And you’re certain you want me to keep them to myself?” 

He slipped his hands underneath her t-shirt, tickling her ribs; she immediately fell forward, overcome with laughter, and it was only his own excellent reflexes that kept him from getting bashed in the nose by her forehead. She grabbed his wrists, and he didn’t fight when she pulled his hands out from under her shirt. When she let him go, he placed his hands flat on her shoulder blades, pulling her close. 

Rose turned her head and sighed against his neck, sending a shiver up the Doctor’s spine. She was so close and warm, and he was so warm, and though he rather liked all of that collective warmth, he thought it might be nice if maybe they ditched some of the clothing and. . . .

“So Doctor,” Rose said, her voice quiet but right near his ear and breathy in the most appealing way, “I think I remember you saying something earlier about us being starkers in the living room. Seems this might be a really great opportunity to put your money where your mouth is.” 

He grinned. “I was just thinking the same thing.”


	5. Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took me so long to finish and post! My fabulous beta, [crazygirlne](http://crazygirlne.tumblr.com), deserves all of the credit for me actually getting my act together and finally getting this written. Also, this chapter is NSFW.

It was early when the Doctor woke up -- a bit before 5 AM, according to his time sense -- and it was an abrupt sort of awakening. He was instantly fully alert, with no hope of rolling over and falling back asleep. His toes twitched under the covers, and he drummed his fingers on his chest, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. A week ago, he'd have leapt out of bed and trotted off to the console room to tinker. Then he’d have plotted a course for the day, biding his time and all but twiddling his thumbs in eager anticipation, waiting for Donna to wake up.

He winced, remembering that Donna wouldn't be waking up on the TARDIS that morning, either.

He shoved the thought aside, unwilling to let himself dwell on Donna's fate just then and still brimming with the urge to get up, to move, to _do something_. Console room tinkering and course plotting were not exactly options anymore. Wouldn't be for a while, at any rate. And it was far too early to wake Rose and burn off his restless energy another way. He was rude, but he did have his limits.

The choices that were available to him were admittedly limited, he realized with a sigh. The flat was not equipped with endless corridors or an infinite number of rooms, and he didn't want to go outside for a wander and leave Rose to potentially wake up alone. He could read -- Rose had told him she'd found a number of books by some of his favorite authors, ones that had never been written in their home universe -- but that wouldn't keep him occupied for very long. He refused to sit in front of the telly on his own; it was one thing to cuddle on the sofa with Rose and enjoy watching something together, complete with running commentary, but he would not be reduced to staring at some mindless program on a screen in the dark by himself. He wasn't _that_ human. He could make tea and, ooh, perhaps he could bake something. A nice loaf of. . .well, something. Certainly they didn't have all of the necessary ingredients for the Mylorkian date bread he used to make sometimes or those rolls they tried once on Xiliti 7 with powdered arphillo flowers incorporated into the dough. No, it would have to be something he could prepare using things they had on hand. Things like flour and butter and eggs and. . .ah, croissants! Rose loved those, and they were fairly time-consuming. Definitely enough to keep him busy for a while.

"Hmm, yeah I do, but you're talking in your sleep again, Doctor," Rose mumbled into her pillow.

The Doctor looked over at her, startled. "I said that out loud? Blimey, I'm sorry, Rose. I didn't realize. . .I didn't mean to wake you.” He sat up. “Do I really talk in my sleep?"

Rose opened one eye and squinted at him. "What, you're actually awake? Bloody hell, I thought you were gonna sleep all night like a normal person now." She yawned. "What the hell time is it, anyway?"

The Doctor chuckled. Still ever the morning person, Rose was. Nevertheless, he felt bad for waking her.

"Just a bit after five," he said, sheepishly. "I guess I still don't need quite as much sleep as an average human. I feel quite well-rested, though. Couldn't go back to sleep now if I tried. But you, you probably want to get some more rest. I was just thinking. . .erm, apparently aloud. . .that I could go do some baking, perhaps, and you wouldn't have to be bothered by --"

"You're twitching."

He looked over at his foot, which had indeed resumed twitching under the blankets. He stopped it.

Rose propped herself up on her elbow and regarded him in the dim grey morning light leaking through the blinds. "You all right?"

The Doctor nodded emphatically. "Brilliant, fine, yep!" At Rose's doubtful expression, he continued in a slightly less manic tone. "I just woke up with a lot of energy is all. More than I've had since, well, since we've been here. I feel more like my old self than I have in days. . .a-as far as that goes, I mean," he rushed to clarify. "Obviously I still feel like myself in most ways. It's just the, the human stuff, you know? Being tired and getting hungry. . .and thirsty! Honestly, Rose, human kidneys are terribly inefficient, filtering out so much liquid that could be used to hydrate cells and systems."

"So this is, what, just like all those times I'd wake up and find you in the workshop because you'd got so bored waiting for me that you'd tried to rebuild the dishwasher again?"

"Weeeeell, I wouldn't say _bored_ so much as. . .excited? Because really, I'd wake up after a solid two-hour sleep and have us parked somewhere brilliant and beautiful that I couldn't wait to show you, and you'd still be dead to the world for another eight hours or something, and do you have any idea how long eight hours feels when all you want to do is see the awe on your best mate's face when she looks out at the Valley of Whispers for the first time, and you've already read seventeen books _and_ tended the vegetable garden _and_ played five games of nine-pin? So when you remember that the dishwasher’s still making a funny noise in the rinse cycle after the last time you rebuilt it, what choice do you have, really?"

Rose watched him, a pensive sort of look on her face. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he was probably not the easiest person to interact with immediately upon waking. He shrugged apologetically, head tilted to one side.

“Should’ve figured you’d go completely spare, living like this,” Rose finally said, “with walls and curtains and all. Same old view outside the windows every day, no new worlds to explore or revolutions to spark. At least the flat’s not got carpets, or we’d _really_ be in trouble. You'd run outta here so fast I wouldn't even be able to --”

“Oh, no, no no no,” he shook his head and pulled his legs in, crossing them and turning fully toward her. He put his hand on her arm, squeezing gently, smiling when she placed a hand on his leg in return. “These past few days have been. . .they’ve been absolutely brilliant. Honestly, before I woke up this morning, I hadn’t given the world outside these walls more than a passing thought. Yes, of course I miss the TARDIS and being able to show you new places. Yes, I floundered about a bit this morning trying to come up with a feasible way to channel my restless energy. I can’t expect to be able to set aside centuries-old habits overnight. But I’ll adapt, Rose. I want this. I do.”

She nodded slowly at him. 

“Besides,” he continued, “we’ll have our new TARDIS in less than two years. Probably. If everything goes according to plan. And think how much there will be for both of us to explore in a whole new universe!"

Rose smirked. "Meanwhile, I could show you a new thing or two here on Earth. Just wait til you see what the Eiffel Tower looks like in this world."

"Exactly!" He beamed at her, then his smile softened as he cupped her cheek. "So don't worry your head about me. I'm not running anywhere unless we're running together." He sat up straighter, rubbing his hands together. "Now, you go back to sleep, and I'll go see about baking up a batch of croissants. What do you say?"

She shook her head. "Nah, I'm awake now. But I had a thought." She pushed herself up so she was also sitting, facing him, accepting his hands when he offered them. "Did you maybe wanna take a trip? Today, I mean. There's someplace. . .well, I never thought I'd get a chance to show you, but here we both are. It'd be a bit of a drive, or we could try to get a zepp last-minute, though the float's not _that_ much shorter if you go commercial. . . ."

"We don't have to go anywhere just yet," he said, stroking his thumbs across her knuckles. "You've got to still be exhausted from the past few weeks. No need to go gallivanting all over. Really, it can wait."

“But I’d like to.” She squeezed his hands. “I mean, if _you_ want to. You said the other day that you didn’t want to have to leave the flat for a while, but I thought since you woke up all, well, bouncy, then maybe you’d changed your mind about that.”

"Well, I'm not opposed to the idea of going somewhere with you, certainly. What is it you want to show me?"

Rose bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as though she were deciding what to say. "Reckon it's no good trying to keep it a surprise. You'd probably figure it out before we were halfway there. All right. D'you know why there's a President here, instead of a Prime Minister? Can you see it in the, y'know, timelines and that?"

The Doctor closed his eyes and concentrated, pleased to note that the relevant timelines came into focus almost immediately. His mental alignment with this universe's Vortex frequency was nearly complete. He traced backward through the history of Pete's World Britain, noting the tenures of President Thatcher and President Churchill, further and further back until. . . .

"Oh!" he said, surprised that he hadn’t realized it earlier. "Oh, of course! Queen Victoria."

He opened his eyes to see Rose nodding at him.

"Since you and I didn't exist in this universe, lots of things throughout history are different. I've checked up on a few of the smaller ones, but that change, us not being there to keep the Queen from being bitten by the werewolf, _that_ seems to be the most significant."

“I admit I’m a bit surprised that event changed the whole system of government, though I’ve certainly seen bigger changes arise from seemingly small choices made or paths not taken,” he mused. “So, Lewis, are we off to the scene of the crime?” His eyebrows waggled conspiratorially.

Rose giggled. “Well, Sarge, seeing as how the Torchwood Estate in this universe is open to the public, and the last time we were there, I spent a good bit of time wanting to shag your brains out, I thought it might be sort of fun to revisit or something. Unless you think it’s daft.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s at all daft,” he said. “As it happens, I seem to recall being terribly distracted by that tiny denim thing you were wearing. Nearly-naked timorous beastie, indeed.”

"You told me I'd've been better off in a bin bag," she teased.

He snorted. "More like _I'd've_ been better off if you were. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were actively trying to inspire an entire parade of inappropriate thoughts marching through my head from the moment you got up that day."

"Might've been," she said, a bit smugly. "Only fair, though. Turnabout and all." Her tongue peeked between her teeth, and the Doctor smiled.

"Oh? How's that?"

"Well, you only did the same thing to me every bloody day, didn't you? You with your tight trousers and your perfect hair and the. . .with the. . . ." She mimed working controls on the console, fingers splayed as if around the annomodulation sphere.

He chuckled, low in both tone and volume, pleased as he always would be whenever Rose admitted to fancying him. He reached for her hands, placing them atop his head and leaning forward slightly. He smiled as her fingers tightened in his hair, tugging a bit to draw his lips to her own. 

He didn't fully register the sour tang on his own tongue until he opened his mouth to hers -- and how human was that, having bloody morning breath? -- but he found he didn't care. She didn't seem to, either. 

“So, how long of a drive have we got?” he murmured against her mouth between kisses. “Nine, ten hours?”

“Mmm, thereabouts,” she said. “Why?”

“So we don’t need to leave right this minute or anything?”

"Hmm-mmm," she hummed, shaking her head slightly. "Can't leave til after I've phoned to make sure there's a room available, anyway. Couple of hours, at least."

"Well, in that case. . . ." He trailed off, placing a hand between her shoulder blades to provide support while he slowly pressed her backward without breaking the kiss.

* * *

Shirts were discarded after a very thorough snog, and the Doctor sat up, straddling Rose’s thighs.

His hands cupped her face and trailed down her neck, brushing her shoulders and moving further still, glancing feather-light along the undersides of her breasts. She shivered. Fingertips dragged delicately over her ribs, mapping each ridge and hollow. Palms flattened, he splayed his hands over her abdomen, briefly losing contact when she sucked in a breath. She watched him as he stared, his eyes roving over her body. Not just her breasts, bare and smooth, but the plane of her stomach, the curves of her hips, the gooseflesh breaking out on her skin as his fingertips trailed back up her sides and down again, the motion deliberate and almost reverent.

She let her own gaze break away from his face, shifting to watch his hands on her, eyes following up his arms and landing on his lean, strong chest. She drank him in as he did her, some small part of her still unable to believe that he was there and real and hers.

He paused in his exploration, hands stilled and gripping her hips lightly. She looked back to his face to find him meeting her gaze with his own, soft and open and loving. A wide smile broke across her face, reflected on his a mere moment later.

"All right, then?" 

She nodded. "I'm just happy. Properly happy."

His smile grew even wider. "Me too."

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on either side of her head and bringing his lips to hers. Rose was soon lost in the slow slide of his tongue, unhurried, meeting her own, then brushing against her hard palate, then returning. Her hands wandered across the muscles of his shoulders and back, making a detour to his bum and trailing back up his spine. She arched into the hand he brought up to cup her breast and sighed into his mouth. Her sigh became a low moan of appreciation when he flexed his fingers, fondling gently; the moan became a soft gasp when his mouth replaced his hand. 

Rose’s hips began to move in tiny, almost involuntary, undulations. Arousal building, the tension was starting to coil low in her belly, and the steady throb between her thighs was quickly turning unhurried exploration into something else entirely. She needed. . . .

The Doctor shifted his weight, raising one knee just enough to slide his leg between hers, pressing his thigh firmly against her. She groaned, arching into him, and he moved his mouth to her other breast. He groped for her hand, threading their fingers together when he found it, and she tightened her grip as he leaned into her again.

He raised his face to look at her, and Rose's skin tingled from his day and a half of stubble that had rasped a trail across her chest. His eyes were dark, meeting hers, his lips parted and breath coming just a bit more heavily than it had been.

“This is all escalating rather more quickly than I’d planned,” he said, a hint of a smile dancing at the edges of his mouth.

She raised an eyebrow. “And that’s a problem because. . . ?”

“Well, I’d wanted to really take my time, you see. We’ve got hours before we need to leave, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to be extra thorough. But then you”--Rose’s mouth fell open as he shifted again and pressed his pelvis against hers--“had to start making all of those noises. How am I supposed to maintain any semblance of control under these conditions?”

“Who says I want you to stay in control?” Rose countered. “Maybe I don’t want to be in control, either. Besides, we carry on like this for hours, I’m gonna want a kip after, and then we’ll be running late.”

“Well, I suppose there is that. Wouldn’t want you to be too drowsy to drive, after all. And I did wake you up so very early. Terribly rude of me.” He began to kiss his way down her body, punctuating his words with hot presses of lips to skin. “How will I ever make it up to you?”

“You seem to be off to a good start,” she said, eyes slipping closed as the combination of soft lips and tongue and rough stubble marked a meandering path across her chest and ribs and belly. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her pyjama shorts, and she lifted her hips so that he could slide them off. 

She shivered at the occasional rushes of cool when air hit the places where his tongue darted out to slide along her skin. Nerve endings fired as his chin brushed against the curve of her hip and his teeth grazed the same spot a moment later. When his cheek scraped along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, Rose winced, and the Doctor stopped.

“Everything all right?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him, a bit sheepish. “You’re sort of scratchy is all. And I’m already a bit, erm, sore, down there.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

She bit her lip. “Could you just. . .maybe take it slowly at first, after all?”

The barest flash of a smirk crossed his features, and she rolled her eyes in an unspoken, but affectionate, _Shut up_. He reached his tongue out and delicately ran it along the crease of her thigh. “I will be very, very careful.”

“Mmhmm,” Rose hummed, and he began to trace patterns with the tip of his tongue, looping and swirling closer to her center, but slowly. Maddeningly slowly. She shifted, trying to allow him better access, but he started to move his mouth away instead, working toward her knee. Reaching down, she caught his hair and tugged, gently, and he chuckled.

“Careful’s great, but you don’t have to take the scenic route,” she growled, and he laughed again.

“Oh, but I so enjoy the scenic route,” he said, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee. Her fingers tightened again in his hair, and he nipped lightly at her skin. “So impatient.”

“Doctor, would you please --”

Her request was cut off in a groan when he quickly moved and ran the flat of his tongue firmly against her. Two more strong swipes to her center, and then he turned his attention back to her other leg. A frustrated, needy noise formed in the back of her throat. 

The Doctor wasn't wrong; Rose was not exactly the most patient of people. And foreplay was all well and good, but beyond a certain point, she found the teasing to be much more maddening than exciting. If the Doctor was going to insist on keeping up the game, she would have to take matters into her own hands. 

Removing her hand from his hair, she brought it up to dip two fingers into her own heat, grinning at the Doctor's sharp intake of breath once he noticed what she was doing. Abandoning his investigation of her knee, he stared, open-mouthed. Rose let her head tip back on the pillow and gave a low moan as she withdrew her fingers and pressed them slowly in again. 

She could practically hear the last of his restraint falling away, and then his mouth was on her, lapping and sucking and sending jolts of electricity up her spine. He batted her hand away and replaced it with his own, fingers pumping in a steady rhythm, and that in combination with the flicking of his tongue sent her careening toward the edge. All it took was the added vibration from a well-timed hum, and she was gone.

He brought her back gently, slowing the movements of his fingers and pulling his mouth away. She opened her eyes to find him looking at her with undisguised want. He wiped his chin on his shoulder and crawled up her body, pausing to tug his boxer shorts down and off. Rose sighed as he slid into her, reaching around to grab his arse and pull him in deeper. He put his forehead to hers and held still while he took a deep breath.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to how good this feels," he said. "I mean it, Rose, you feel. . .just. . .'amazing' doesn't even _begin_ to cover it."

She couldn't help laughing. "You say that as if we haven't spent the past three days shagging. Like it's some sort of brand new discover--ungh."

He rocked his hips, effectively quashing any further attempts at cheek.

"But I think it bears repeating," he said, withdrawing nearly completely and then driving back home. "Or don't you agree?"

"It's not that I disagree, 's just. . .ah. . .not exactly news."

He set a slow but steady rhythm, and Rose wrapped her legs around him, crossing her ankles behind his back. Every stroke sent shock waves through her core, pressure rapidly re-building.

"Newsworthy, perhaps not. Noteworthy?" He thrust a hand between them, rubbing firmly and driving faster into her. "Oh yes."

Stars exploded behind her eyelids as she came, hard.

"Fuck," she groaned.

"Rather thought I was," he panted above her, and she giggled again.

"Oh, you bloody well are."

She brought her mouth to his shoulder, sucking until she'd left a mark. He nuzzled her neck, breath hitching in the way that let her know he was close.

And then her left leg was hooked up over his shoulder, and the angle was exactly right, and the rhythm of his hips faltered as he lost control. His strangled cry of release was enough to send Rose over the edge yet again, and time seemed to stand still while they lost themselves in each other. 

The Doctor collapsed on the bed beside her, sucking in lungfuls of air. Gradually his breathing slowed, then deepened, eventually becoming a light snore.

“Sorted out that restless energy, then?” Rose teased, prodding him lightly in the ribs.

“Oi,” he protested, flinching away from her. “That’s no way to thank me for providing you with a series of excellent orgasms.”

She snuggled into his side, planting a kiss on his shoulder. She considered teasing him further but decided to take pity on him instead. “Reckon you’re right about that. Although,” she added with a raised eyebrow, “if you want to join me in the shower in a bit, I bet I could come up with a better way to thank you.”

The Doctor gave an interested hum. "Well," he said with a chuckle, "that's certainly one way to pique a knackered man's interest. And if you will ever so kindly grant me a few more minutes of rest and recovery, I would be delighted to hear more about what you've got in mind."

It took less than two minutes of Rose sharing exactly what she had in mind, in explicit detail, before she was giggling and following a very eager Doctor into the en suite.

* * *

After showering and making the necessary phone calls and arrangements, the couple quickly packed a bag, downed some tea and toast, and headed out the door.

"Ready?"

Rose looked over at the Doctor, sitting in the passenger seat of her car. He had his "ready for adventure" grin on his face.

"Allons-y!" he said cheerfully, and then his eyes went wide. "Oh! Rose! I never told you. I _actually_ met a bloke called Alonso, a couple of years back. Isn't that brilliant? I got to say 'allons-y, Alonso' and everything!"

She laughed, unable to resist his infectious enthusiasm. "Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later." She turned the key and started the car. "Right, then, off we go."

The radio was on, and Rose hummed along under her breath. After a while, she realized that the Doctor had grown uncharacteristically quiet as they drove through the city. She shot sideways glances at him every so often, always finding him staring out the passenger side window, occasionally swiveling his head to track something or other as they drove by. She kept waiting for him to burst out with some interesting bit of trivia or observation, but he stayed silent. Eventually, it occurred to her that maybe he was waiting for _her_ to say something.

She turned the radio down and cleared her throat. "'S different in little ways, y'know?" 

He jumped slightly, as if startled out of his thoughts. "Oh? How do you mean?"

"Well, 's like when we were all here the first time, you and me and Micks. 'Til we saw the zeppelins in the sky, looked just like home. On the surface, it all seems about the same. Same layout, more or less. Same buildings, most of 'em, same architecture and all that. Only like," she paused, pointing at a road sign as they passed, "it's hard to see from here, but those signs are navy blue and red instead of black and red. And the font's not quite the same as back home. Stuff like that."

"And the zeppelins," he added.

"Well yeah, there are some big differences, too. Just, I dunno, it's the little ones took me more by surprise, back when I first got stuck here. Made the place seem wrong in ways I couldn't always put my finger on."

If she didn't know him as well as she did, or if she hasn't been looking over at just that moment, she'd have missed the way he winced, ever so slightly, at her words. She waited again for him to comment, but once more they traveled for several minutes without speaking. Rose wasn't sure what to make of his reticence; he'd seemed so eager about the trip when they'd first climbed into the car, but now she was starting to worry maybe she'd pushed him into something he wasn't ready for or didn't want.

"Doctor?"

He looked over at her. "Hmm?"

"What's on your mind?"

"Oh, I. . .well, it's just that. . . ." He sighed, continuing in a much quieter voice. "It must have been so hard for you. Not that I thought it'd be a walk in the park, but. . .dunno, I guess I was so used to the people I traveled with just going back to their lives after we parted ways. Obviously it was different because you. . .because we. . .but you still had Jackie. And Mickey. Plus, you gained a father and a brother. But it wasn’t at all like going back to your regular life, was it?"

Rose gave him a wry half-smile. “Just figured this out now, did you?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. But I suppose I didn’t let myself consider the full degree to which it must have been difficult. You’re strong, Rose, and you’ve done incredible things here. I knew you would adapt, and I suppose it was easier for me to focus on how you’d be happy with your family.” He sighed. "But this. . .driving through this London, seeing all of those little differences you were talking about, it really highlights the discordant nature of this place. I remember it from before, now, but after we left the last time, I was so relieved you didn't want to stay that I. . .well, I suppose I focused more on the reasons you might have been enticed to stay and less on the ways it felt. . .wrong."

Rose reached over for his hand, squeezing it briefly before returning her own to the gear shift. “Reckon I can understand why you might have remembered things that way, but you’re not half thick if you think anyone can just go back to a normal life after traveling with you. Even if they want it, there’s no way it’s an easy transition for anyone. Don’t care if it’s their choice or not.”

“But was it harder building a new life here than it would have been to go back to everything that was familiar in the other universe?”

She tilted her head to the side, considering. “Yes and no. Dunno that I can say it’s ever actually felt like home here, so it was sort of like a fresh start in a way. And once I got past being. . .once I got my head together, the little differences helped me keep from getting too comfortable. Kept me pushing to find a way back. But it's been exhausting. Like, you know when you go on holiday, and it doesn’t matter how nice the place is, you still don't sleep as well there as you do in your own bed?" She paused, then chuckled softly. "Maybe you don't. Know what that's like, I mean."

"No, I think I know what you mean," he said. "I never used to need much sleep, that's true, but it's easier to let one's guard down completely when one is at home, and I can certainly relate to that." He tugged on his ear. "You really never settled in here, then?"

"Well, I had, like, routines and things. I wasn't living on the run or anything. But it's weird, y'know? The TARDIS started feeling like home after we'd been traveling together for, what, a month or so? And then it was strange going back to visit Mum. Like when I came back after Jimmy. Took a while to readjust to my old room and all. So I figured the same thing would happen again, that I'd get comfortable here, and then it'd feel weird going back to the TARDIS. But it didn't. Not that I was there for long but that, that, was like going home."

She thought about the other Doctor's words after they'd landed in Norway. _You're back home_. The hell she was. She'd wanted to grab his lapels and shout into his face. _No, you bloody idiot, home is where I've spent the past three years fighting to get back to! Home is the TARDIS!_

She shook her head and huffed a sigh, very much not wanting to fall back into thinking about that day. Of course the whole thing still stung. On some level, it probably always would. But she was not going to let it hang over her, over them both, for the rest of their lives. She stopped for a red light and cast a glance over at the passenger’s seat, where the Doctor was staring straight ahead, his mouth a tense, thin line, guilt and panic chasing each other across his face. _Oh, bollocks_.

“Hey, that doesn’t mean I’m not happy to be here with you,” she said gently, waiting until he looked back at her. “Reckon this place’ll start feeling more like home soon enough, now you’re here with me and I’m not spending my every waking moment trying to leave. We’ll figure it out together, yeah?”

At this, he finally relaxed into a small smile. “Yeah.”

* * *

They made their way through London and got on the motorway heading north. As they left the city behind them, the Doctor’s unease and discomfort started to fade away. It had really taken him aback how much Pete’s World felt less like a gingerbread house and more like a song being played slightly off-key. Selfish git that he was, he was glad that the Time Lord had more or less made the unilateral decision to leave them here, to not even give Rose the option of staying aboard the TARDIS and returning to the Prime Universe, but he recognized now that “what was best for Rose” wasn’t nearly so cut and dried as he’d once believed.

Outside the city, though, the differences were less starkly highlighted, and without constant reminders of being in the wrong universe, it became easier to slip back into comfortable conversation. 

“And so of _course_ Mum went into labor right after we’d landed in bloody Tunisia, even though she wasn’t due for another fortnight,” Rose was saying. “By the time we recovered the artifact and convinced the Tunisian government that it wasn't actually a religious relic, Tony'd been born. Took another full day to get back."

The Doctor chuckled. "Jackie must've been in a right state."

"Actually, no," Rose said. "I mean, she was sorry I couldn't be there, but I reckon maybe it worked out better that way, just her and Dad, since it was technically his first kid and all. Nice for them to have that bit of time right at the start, just the three of them. And she was so exhausted I'm not sure she had the energy to be upset about me being stuck in the field."

"Still, a pity you had to travel all that way just for a burnt-out Dallivarian torch."

She shrugged. “Just the nature of the job sometimes, I guess. Have to do things the long way round when you don’t have a TARDIS.”

She was quiet a moment, chewing on her lip as though considering whether or not to voice her next thought aloud. He waited.

"Are you still doing all right, not having her in your head and all? I know, I know you said you'd be fine waiting for the new one to grow, but I just. . .it was hard enough for me, adjusting, so I can't even imagine what you must be going through."

He reached over for her hand. "Rose, I _promise_ you I'll be all right. Honestly, this is a vastly better situation than the last time I had to be without her. A couple of years ago, Martha and I were sent back to 1969 while the TARDIS stayed in 2007. It took me ages to work out a way to get her returned to us. And Martha's brilliant, really. Top notch. But she's not you. Being with you, being able to feel the brush of your mind now and again, that makes the whole thing a million times easier to bear."

"And you'll let me know when it's not so easy? When you could do with some help? You won't just try to carry the load on your own?"

"If it comes to that, yes, I will," he promised.

She nodded, jaw set determinedly. “Good. Gonna hold you to that, you know.”

A few miles passed before she spoke again.

“So, about the TARDIS. When we were talking the other night about what we’ll have to do to get the coral started and growing, I never really asked. . .how does it work, exactly? Growing one TARDIS from another.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, like, it’s a coral, yeah? So the bit we’ve got has the same genetic makeup as the original TARDIS, hasn’t it?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Much like an Earth coral, TARDISes can undergo both sexual and asexual reproduction. The former was used extensively on Gallifrey, Time Lords being terribly fond of genetic engineering and all. But in this case, we’re dealing with reproduction via budding. The new is a genetic clone of the original.”

“Sort of like getting your hand chopped off and then growing a whole new version of yourself?”

This gave him pause. He wasn’t sure why the parallel hadn’t occurred to him before. It wasn’t precisely the same thing, but still, he couldn't deny there was something sort of fitting about the symmetry.

“I mean, I know you’re still you,” she clarified. “Took a little while to get used to, but I understand. I guess what I’m wondering is whether the new TARDIS will have all of the, like, memories and things from the original one. Or does it not work the same way?”

“Well, not exactly, no. They’ll be genetically identical, but sentience isn’t transferred the way it was with me. The coral bit we have isn't technically _alive_ yet so much as dormant, waiting for the proper stimulus. Once we set the growth process in motion, the capacity for thought and such will develop."

Rose frowned. "So she won't know us."

"She won't have innate memories of us, no, but she will come to know us very quickly. She'll more or less grow up with us, for lack of a better term. Of course, given the exceedingly long lifespan of TARDISes, she’ll still be quite young, relatively speaking, by the time we’re dead and gone.”

“Wait, so what’s going to happen to her after we die?”

He sighed. “I haven’t really figured that out yet, to be honest. Never been a TARDIS in a universe without a pilot who's got at least a similar lifespan."

They both grew quiet again for a few moments, each deep in thought. When they spoke again, it was simultaneously.

"We've got some time-- "

"We're _not_ just gonna-- "

The Doctor looked over at Rose, raising his eyebrows. "Not gonna what?"

"When you. . .in that Emergency Programme, you said to just leave the TARDIS on a street corner somewhere and let her die. But that's not fair, and it's not right, and we're not doing it."

"That was a worst case scenario, Rose. Better to have done that than to risk letting her fall into dangerous hands."

She shook her head emphatically. "No, I’ve seen a dying TARDIS. It was horrible, and the things I had to--” She cut herself off with another shake of her head, then took a deep breath. “I had to send Donna back, in that false parallel. It was the only way to fix things. But I couldn’t build another Dimension Cannon, not from scratch. So my team helped me collaborate with UNIT to cobble together a time machine using the power of the TARDIS. There wasn’t any other way. But I hated having to do that to her. It felt. . .Doctor, it felt like torture. Like _I_ was a torturer. Draining every last bit of energy from something that was barely hanging on as it was, even though it was like she knew and wanted to help. She must have known, yeah? But even if it was a willing sacrifice, it still felt awful. I don’t want to put another TARDIS through something like that ever again, not on any level.”

“Would you rather the alternative? Have someone like the Master steal the TARDIS and turn her into a paradox machine, potentially allowing the destruction of not only the Earth but Time itself?” He shuddered, remembering the year aboard the Valiant, then reached over and put a hand on Rose’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “But there may be other options. We're clever enough to come up with something, eh? Something we're both comfortable with."

Rose tilted her head to the side, briefly trapping his hand between her shoulder and her ear. "Yeah."

She was right of course, the Doctor realized. It was one thing to let an already-antique TARDIS power down and fade away when the alternatives were far too perilous to consider. It was quite another to condemn so young a being to the same fate. He wasn’t sure, though, what they could do to ensure she wouldn’t be turned into a weapon or worse. A lot could happen in a million-odd years, after all. There was virtually no way to guarantee anything, even with the most meticulous planning and preparation. It was a bit overwhelming to ponder, really.

Remembering then that the burden was no longer his alone to shoulder, he turned to Rose.

“So, what did you have in mind?”


	6. Saturday Evening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not forgotten about this story! I promise it will be finished eventually, and I thank you for your patience with me as I muddle through. Infinite thanks to my amazing beta, [crazygirlne](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crazygirlne), for her unflagging support, and to [resile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/resile) for additional encouragement and cheerleading. :)

The sun hung low in the sky as Rose turned the car off the main road at Torchwood House. The paved driveway and car park were a far cry from the dusty cobblestone courtyard they’d entered on their last visit, but the house itself looked more or less the same, at least from the outside. Glinting with the last rays of evening sun, the glass-topped observatory still towered above the rest of the main building, which was itself more than a little imposing.

The Doctor peered out through the windscreen, eyeing the ivy-covered walls, following them up to the steeply-pitched roof and the smoke curling delicately from one of the chimneys. There were several lights on inside, giving the large house a rather warm and welcoming appearance.

"Not a bad place to spend a night or two," he said as Rose pulled the car to a stop and shut it off. 

"Be rather a bit quieter than the last time, I expect." She turned toward him with a tired sort of smile. "Not that it wasn't exciting, the werewolf and all, but I don't think I'll mind a little less excitement this time around."

He shook his head at her. "Well now you've gone and done it. Might as well have come right out and said, 'Nothing could possibly go wrong.'"

"'Cept you just went and said it, instead," she retorted, smirking at him. "Now if I end up shackled in a stable again, I can definitely blame it on you." She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the car door, while his mind took a brief, involuntary detour. "C'mon. I dunno about you, but I could do with some dinner."

Stepping out of the car, he groaned just a little as he stretched his back. The little Audi was comfortable enough, but ten hours on the road was a long time. After fetching their bag from the boot, Rose led the way toward the main entrance. The Doctor followed close behind, reaching out to take the duffel from her as they walked. She blinked in surprise at him, then smiled. He shifted the bag to his other side, freeing his hand in order to immediately fill it with hers.

The door to the house opened ahead of them, revealing a petite woman with short, gray hair. She gave a curt nod as they approached. The Doctor was about to launch into his usual, "Hello, I’m the Doctor, and this is Rose!" routine when the older woman spoke first.

"Ms. Tyler, is it?"

Rose smiled and reached out to shake the woman’s hand. "That’s me, yeah. I’m Rose, and this is the Doctor. Thanks for letting us come stay on such short notice."

"No trouble at all, Ms. Tyler. We always have a room available for guests of the director." She looked them both up and down. "Is any other luggage that we can assist you with?"

"Nope, just got this--"

A bright light streaked across the sky just overhead, low and fast. The Doctor turned and tracked it as it arced into the field behind them, watching the impact and bracing for the accompanying shockwave. He looked toward Rose and saw that she had turned around as well; she’d also stepped backward and spread her arms, instinct and training driving her to protect the civilian. A low thud reverberated through his chest moments later, joining the swelling of pride he felt for the confidence and competence of his companion. His open mouth transformed into a grin as it became clear there was no immediate threat from whatever had fallen out of the sky.

"Well, that was unexpected!" he exclaimed, turning to address the woman still standing behind them. "You all right there, Ms... erm, sorry, didn't catch your name."

"Likely because I hadn't mentioned it yet," she replied, patting her hair and smoothing her blouse before holding out her hand toward him. "Marion Baker, Head of Guest Services here at the Estate. I have heard some wild stories from Torchwood agents over the years, but I confess this is the first time I've witnessed something of this nature, myself." She looked from him to Rose and back again. "You two are agents yourselves, yes?"

"I am," Rose said. "The Doctor's... well, you could call him an expert consultant or something like that. But I reckon we should ring HQ and then go have a look at whatever fell out there. Didn't look big enough to be a craft, but you never know."

Marion looked past them toward the sky. "It’s not long to sunset."

"Shouldn’t take too long to just have a quick look." Rose glanced back over her shoulder. "But yeah. Do you maybe have a torch we could borrow?"

"Of course," Marion said with another nod. "If you’ll excuse me a moment, I can fetch one for you. Shall I have your luggage taken up to your room now, too?"

"I'll take it," the Doctor interjected. "You can show me where we're staying while Rose phones Torchwood, and I'll bring the torch back out here after."

Rose smiled. "That would be great, ta."

She pulled her mobile from her pocket and dialed. The Doctor could hear her behind him as he turned to follow Marion inside.

"Jake? You are never gonna believe this."

* * *

The Doctor returned, carrying the borrowed torch, just as Rose was disconnecting her call. Despite their early start to the day and long drive, he looked far less tired than she felt. In fact, he looked positively eager, eyes sparkling, grin taking up practically half his face. She couldn’t help getting swept up a bit by his infectious enthusiasm.

"Well, ready for your first Torchwood field recovery job?"

He scoffed. "Oh, but that makes it sound so dull! C'mon, Rose. Let's go see what fell out of the sky."

She was unable to contain the smile that surged through her then, not that she’d have tried anyway. He beamed back at her, holding out his hand for her to take, fingers squeezing gently when she did.

"Reckon we’ll even be able to find this thing before the sun goes down? I tried to keep track of where it fell, but it all happened so fast. I mean, I’m pretty sure it came down over there... ish." She raised her free hand and pointed toward a stand of trees at the base of the hills ahead. "But it’s hard to tell."

"More like--" He squinted into the distance, reaching up to slightly adjust the direction she was pointing, moving her hand just a bit down and to the right. "--there. Given the landing trajectory and terminal velocity, I’m fairly certain I’ve estimated its approximate location to within a few square metres. I’d say it’s, oh, about half a mile from us, give or take." He dropped his hand and looked at her, and she nodded. "Sun should be up for about another half hour, which doesn’t give us loads of time."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Run, then?"

He grinned. "Oh yes."

She laughed, and they were off and running, back down the drive, across the A93, into the field on the other side of the road. It was settling into a crisp spring evening, the air fresh with a gentle breeze. The grasses brushed against their trouser legs, swishing against denim and wool. Running hand-in-hand with the Doctor, Rose felt freer and more at ease than she had in years. It was extraordinary and a little bit surprising how completely effortless it was to reclaim their dynamic after years of separation. Even though they had both changed somewhat as individuals during their time apart, they were still the same team.

A stream ran through the field, just beyond a line of trees, and Rose and the Doctor slowed when they came to it, eventually coming to a stop at the water’s edge. It wasn’t deep, or all that wide, but it was an opportunity to catch their breath and find their bearings. 

"Not much farther, yeah?"

"Right, should be just up ahead there. Hard to tell without better light, but I think there might be a tiny crater in the ground."

Rose squinted. "Oh yeah, I think I see it, too. Can't be anything too large, then."

"Nah, probably just a meteorite, though it could be something that fell off a craft. Won't know til we get over there."

"We had a compact hyperdrive come down in Wales last year, middle of the night," she said. "Scared the pants off a couple of sheep farmers, left a big hole in the middle of their field. This agent on my team, Martin, it was his first field mission, right? He told the farmers it was an experimental lorry engine that fell out of a freight zeppelin."

The Doctor chuckled. "Let me guess, that one backfired a bit."

"Narrowly averted a full government investigation into the safety of air transport, yeah." She shook her head, smiling wryly at the memory. "C'mon, then. Not much light left. I don't fancy hunting for this thing in the dark."

A quick hop across the stream and they were off again, at a brisk walk this time, though still hand-in-hand. Rose could see the Doctor's full focus on the area ahead of them, his entire body tilting forward more and more the nearer they got. She could have said nearly anything just then, and he probably wouldn’t have heard it, yet she couldn’t keep from smiling. On anyone else, it would be an annoying trait. (All right, fine, sometimes it was an annoying trait on him, too.) But it was so... him. And she’d _missed_ him.

As the small crater came into full view, she could just make out the dark gray lump -- which looked to be about half a metre in diameter -- at its center. The Doctor let go of her hand and trotted a few steps ahead, reaching, out of habit she supposed, into the breast pocket where he usually kept his sonic. He made a little frustrated noise in the back of his throat when he came up empty, then hopped into the shallow hole in the dirt. Rose stepped in after him, joining him to crouch beside the fallen object.

Upon initial inspection with admittedly less-than-ideal lighting, it looked like an ordinary rock. The Doctor reached back into his pocket and pulled out his glasses, sliding them on with a hum. He straightened a bit to fish the torch out of another pocket, then leaned forward again as he clicked it on. The light beam played across the surface, and the dark gray rock glittered with purple- and teal-colored crystals.

"Well now! You're a long way from home, aren't you? I mean, most asteroidal bodies would be, relatively speaking, if they ended up here. But this one is from an especially long way away. It's probably been traveling for, oh I don't know, two hundred and sixty billion years!"

"Really? How can you tell?" Rose asked, curiosity drawing her closer to him and to the rock.

"Well, I can't be certain without a complete chemical analysis, but I'm fairly sure... Hang on...."

He set the torch down, leaned even further forward and licked the surface of the meteorite. Rose’s nose wrinkled; the past few days she had really rather appreciated his apparent inability to keep his tongue in his mouth, but this.... He rocked back on his heels, sputtering and gagging a bit.

"That's horrible!"

Rose snorted. "D'you reckon?"

"No, but... Well, yes, but... I used to be able to identify compounds and their relative concentrations by taste. Useful trick of Time Lord physiology, that." He shook his head. "I have _got_ to get my sonic fixed."

Rosie's sympathy won out over her distaste. Just when he had been feeling like his old self, that must have been a pretty jarring reminder of his new, limited abilities. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.

"Tell me what you think it is, then. At least until we can get it tested. You said it came from really far away?"

He smiled at her, placing his hand briefly over hers before picking the torch back up and letting the light play over the meteorite's glittering surface.

"Well, d'you see how it sparkles purple like that?" She nodded, and he continued. "I'm fairly certain those crystals embedded in the surface are what you lot call poudretteite, which is an extraordinarily rare mineral here on Earth and is only found in this sort of abundance in the Fornax A Galaxy, which is some 60 million light years away from Earth. This rock could indeed be part of the planet Matheopia, which collided with the much larger Susuto and exploded, somewhere on the order of a quarter trillion years ago. Uninhabited, mind. Hell of a bang, though."

"So this means...what, exactly? Is it dangerous?"

"Oh no, not dangerous in the least! It's just interesting, don't you think? You want to talk about history, _this_ rock's got a history. It came from an exploded planet and traveled 60 million light years across the universe without running into a single other thing. Isn't that remarkable? I mean, the odds of that are...well...literally astronomical."

Rose grinned at his joke and reached her hand out to touch the rock. It _was_ remarkable, and she felt a swooping sort of feeling in her stomach as she tried to wrap her mind around just how far the bloody thing had travelled. "'S weird. I mean, I've stood on other planets and been five billion years into the future, and I _still_ think that's pretty amazing. I don't think I'll ever get over just how very much is out there in the universe."

"I've been traveling through it for almost a thousand years, and I have yet to get over it, myself," he said, smiling warmly at her. "It's why we get on, you and me. You can appreciate things like this."

"The only reason we get on, is it?" she asked, tongue teasing him between her teeth.

"Weeeeeeell, no. Not by half. But it _is_ one of the things I love the most about you."

He was so willing to just let the word slip out in reference to her, now. So much more willing than he'd ever been, before, and so sort of casually earnest. She was still getting used to hearing it, still quietly thrilled every time.

With a shy sort of smile, she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and returned to the task at hand. "Right, then. This thing should probably be in a museum, d'you reckon?"

"Oh, I suppose that's probably the proper place for it, not that anyone will have any idea precisely where it's come from."

Rose’s brow furrowed. "Right, you said it’s full of some really rare mineral, yeah? Guess that makes this like a really big discovery or something."

"Probably makes this an incredibly valuable rock, actually. All the more reason to have it in a museum."

"Might end up shoved underground in Van Statten’s bunker otherwise." The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up, and Rose nodded in confirmation. "Yeah, he exists here, too. Torchwood keeps tabs on him, but we can’t really do anything about the stuff he’s bought and paid for. Mostly just make sure, best we can, that he hasn’t actually got anything dangerous. No Dalek or anything, far as we know."

"Yeah, they don’t seem to exist in this universe." It was Rose’s turn to raise her eyebrows in surprise, and he tapped his temple by way of explanation. "Not on Skaro, anyway. Not according to the timelines. Fully intend to check that out further at some point. But yes, definitely wise to keep an eye on Van Statten, and to keep this out of his little _collection_ if we can. Doesn’t seem right for it to have traveled all this way only to end up buried underground."

Rose nodded again. "Well, I’m betting it’s too heavy for us to carry back tonight--"

"Round about 230 kilos, yeah," he interrupted, then shrugged. "Give or take."

She laughed then, surprised-yet-not that he'd managed to come up with that just from looking at the thing. "Right, well that's definitely too heavy. I'll ring HQ and have them send out a retrieval team with proper gear. All right to just leave it here til tomorrow, though?"

"Oh, I don't imagine there's anyone around to bother with it. Not many people daft enough to go chasing after fallen rocks in the dark."

She grinned at him. "You calling me daft then?"

"Oh, definitely." He grinned back. "Yet another reason we get on so well."

She laughed and stood up again, pulling out her phone once more. Thumb poised over the call button, she flashed him another smile. “Reckon you’re not wrong about that.” 

* * *

"Right, so I’ll text you the coordinates. You’re welcome. Yeah, me too. I will. You too, Jake, ta."

Disconnecting the call, Rose tapped out the command to send her current GPS coordinates to Jake and the rest of the team, then shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans and held out her hand. The Doctor smiled and took it, aiming the torch in the direction of the estate. The beam was strong and cut through the twilight, clearly illuminating a nice swath of the field in front of them. He nodded, appraisingly, and turned to Rose.

"Back to base, Agent Tyler?" he asked, one eyebrow raised wryly.

"This operation’s over, Doctor. I’m officially back on holiday. And," she added with a grin, "officially starving. Let’s see if there’s something to eat back at the house, yeah?"

"I think that's an excellent plan."

They began to walk back, linked hands swinging gently between them. The sun had fully set behind the hills, so they kept a steady pace but didn't rush, the Doctor's eyes scanning the ground ahead so as not to stumble into any surprise gopher holes. It was a different feeling from their dash across the field before, but no less _them_. Whether they were running all out or strolling calmly, there was something thrilling in the feeling of Rose's palm pressed firmly against his own. Thrilling but equally comforting and restorative. It was a balm on the ache of years of missing her.

Rose eventually broke the easy quiet.

"Reckon I won't get out of filing paperwork on this, even though it turned out to just be a rock. Blimey, did I miss that about traveling with you. No after-action reports, no mission reviews, just save the day and on to the next."

The Doctor grimaced. "Back when I worked for UNIT, the Brigadier usually handled that aspect of the job for me. Funny thing, you hand in a few completely unintelligible reports, and suddenly no one quite wants you in charge of writing them, anymore."

She snorted. "Good luck trying that at Torchwood. They'll make you keep doing re-writes til your eyes bleed. Easier to just get it done right the first time."

"Oh, I think you underestimate my tenacity and willingness to play the long game." He waggled his eyebrows at her, was rewarded with a tongue-touched grin. 

"No argument from me about the length of your game," she teased, squeezing his hand.

He tried to will away the involuntary stirring in his trousers before remembering once again that he no longer possessed that particular ability. Honestly, it really was a wonder humans ever got anything done, slaves as they were to their endocrine systems. He cleared his throat, sniffed.

"Not that I plan on playing _that_ game with anyone aside from you, but I suppose certain skills are transferrable. My unwavering focus and attention to detail--"

"Won't help you much if you're wanting to write dodgy reports," she interrupted.

"Never said I'd apply my focus to the paperwork itself. Or, more accurately, that I'd apply it to doing what's expected of me."

"Git." He stumbled just a bit as she gave his shoulder a playful shove with her own. "On your own head, then. Just don't expect me to bail you out when you get sent to after-hours training."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said with a grin.

They lapsed back into a comfortable silence, turning to follow the stream back up to the road instead of trying to hop over it in the growing dark. As they walked, the Doctor took a deep breath in through his nose, taking in the fresh evening air, closing his eyes for just a couple of steps. The smell of juniper and meadow-grass were easy to detect, even with his limited olfactory sensitivity, and if he paid attention, he could pick up bits of bracken fern and some kind of moss, something lush and damp. He opened his eyes and took a second breath, noting the overall wet smell of the stream beside them and switching his focus to what he could hear. Below the steady swishing of his and Rose’s feet through the tall grass, the sounds of the evening wildlife were noticeable. A frog croaked once, twice, and there was a rustling sound of wings and leaves as an owl or something took off from a nearby tree branch. 

It would still take some getting used to, the human senses that were essentially a lower-resolution version of his previous Time Lord ones. But just like the re-tuning of his timesense, he would adjust, adapt, learn how to get as much out of them as he could.

Rose’s hand squeezed his again, and he smiled, turning his head to see her already looking at him, something soft in her gaze.

"Something on your mind?" he asked.

"I was just thinking about that meteorite," she said. "About how far away it came from. How out of the whole wide universe, it ended up landing here."

"Even the most unlikely of occurrences is still possible," he said, nodding. After a beat, he winked and added, "For that matter, sometimes even the impossible is still possible. Though that might just be where you’re concerned."

She chuckled and bumped his shoulder again, more lightly than before. "That’s just it, though. You, you’re like that meteorite. You’ve traveled so far and seen so much, I can hardly even imagine how much, and yet somehow you ended up here. With me."

Her voice was quiet at the end, almost shy-sounding, and he impulsively let go of her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders and tuck her in close to his side. Their feet collided on the next step, and it was Rose’s turn to stumble; she giggled, he apologized, and they settled into a rhythm once again, her arm coming up to settle securely around his waist.

"You know," he said after a while, ducking his chin to glance at her, "me finding you the first time may have been a ten-billion-to-one shot of pure luck. You finding _me_ again, though… You were up against even bigger odds, weren’t you? It should have been physically impossible, and you made it happen anyway. And you saved the multiverse, to boot. I think that’s even more extraordinary, don’t you?"

"Dunno about that," she said, smiling. "Reckon I did all right, but it wasn’t just me. Had a whole team to help get me through, and anyway it--" He felt her wince as she stopped talking and took a deep breath, fixing her eyes on the ground in front of them.

"What is it?" He stopped walking, then stepped around in front of Rose so he could look at her properly.

She took another breath before continuing. "Well it was really Donna who saved everything in the end, wasn’t it?" When he didn’t respond immediately, she stammered, "Sorry, I… I shouldn’t have… You were being sweet, and I didn’t mean to go and make you feel sad. Just doesn’t feel… right, you know? Going on about saving the universe without talking about what she did."

He sighed, guilt gnawing at him for what had happened to Donna, perhaps gnawing even more for having made such an effort not to think about her for the past few days. Shaking his head, he said, "No, Rose, it’s okay to talk about Donna. I wouldn’t be here without her, in more ways than a few, and that’s something for which I’ll never be able to repay her. What she did should be remembered… _She_ should be remembered, even if it hurts."

Rose nodded and stepped forward to hug him, tucking her head just right so he could rest his chin on it. She kept him grounded, Rose did. Kept him accountable. She had never been one to let him forget about the people around them, had always seen things he missed because she paid more attention than he did to the domestic sorts of details. Her knack for finding the exact words he needed to hear would never cease to amaze him.

He squeezed her tightly for a moment more, then released her and took a step back, his free hand resting lightly on her upper arm. He gave her a nod of reassurance, which she returned, and then he took her hand in his once more. They resumed their walk back to the house, the quiet between them a little more somber than it had been, but the Doctor could feel the steady comfort Rose wordlessly offered. That really did make all the difference, he decided; they had both been through so much, and it would be naive to think that either of them would simply carry on unaffected, strong as they both were individually. But together they could weather the rough patches and hold each other up, without expectation or judgment, because _together_ , they were even stronger.


End file.
